I think the first letter you came up with would have been better. The second one, athough well writen and accurate, was probably more than the Judge wanted to read through. K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid.
The real problem here is that it would take some effort on the part of some clerk and judge to actually drop the ticket. Its easier to for them to ignore you. They are getting paid a salary wage to wade through a mountain of tickets. In fact, it is easier for them to see you come to court and dismiss the ticket there than do somthing out of the ordinary and pull the ticket now. Pulling your ticket now would take some time to find it, remove it from the system, notify you with a letter that the charges are dropped....or, throw your letter in the garbage. Unfortunatly we live in a world where your letter was thrown in the trash and there is no way to even find out who is accountable. I am in no way defending their actions, just giving you the reality of the situation your up against. These people see thousands of tickets a year and are probably pretty numb to the complaints that come along with them.

If you do decide to pay and not fight it, pay all at once. In pennies. A budy of mine did this at work. He had to pay a stupid phone bill on the company line. So he got the amount together in pennies and went to the finance dept. They were a little pi$$ed when he dumped the pennies on her desk.

If the buoy you posted a pic of is the one on the South entrance to the Channel, there is about 1/2 mile between there and the buoy line at the South end of Thompson Bay. I clocked it once on GPS from the North side of the Channel to the end of Thompson bay and it was about 1 mile. I would say that buoy is about the 1/2 way point.

I see little family boats and PWC's getting on plane all the time in Thompson Bay and have yet to see one get pulled over. If you are in a performance boat you are definitely a target.

I blew the no wake zone once by mistake coming from the lake into Thompson Bay when I was racing another boat and did not get off the throttles soon enough. I was stopped and they did a safety check, but I did not get a ticket.

Again, good luck.

TEST

If you fight this ticket and go to court hire a court reporter this makes the judge keep to the rules of law. IF he or she does't you have a legal record, scares the hell out of a judge.

ive decided to pay the dam thing. cost me to much to fight it since i live in missouri. if it happened local ide argue my case and probably still lose but at least i could get it off my chest.

tell yaa what , if i lived out there ide seriously consider dumping 14 thousand pennys on the counter just for spite. what could they do? :D

Believe it or not coins are not legal tender and they
don`t have to take it.