Offshoreonly.com - Wsidom from T2x?

He wrote this several years ago. I thought perhaps, in light of some recent tragedies, perhaps this was worth revisiting:

"So this is about answers..... Everybody wants answers.... Okay..... if you're rich enough to afford a plane, you're rich enough to learn to fly it... There are flight schools all over the world. There are also real good high performance driving schools...for cars. But boats you learn the hard way. You learn by watching and asking and listening...and mostly by driving. There is no substitute for seat time. The problem is that a lot of us learned the limits in small boats (in my case as small as 11 feet in length) later these limits scaled up into larger craft...so did the speed. I'm not sure how you solve the problem of someone "earning enough money" to afford a boat that he or she has no basis of experience to drive. In spite of your statement earning money rarely translates into intelligence or any other talents. The issue is that these boats are most lethal at their limits and you can't know these limits until you've been beyond them.... Old tunnel adage..but still true.."you're not a tunnel driver until you've flipped one". The only real little starter boats right now are waverunners and jetskis, which may teach you more bad habits than good.

But for the sake of argument let's say you can learn..or better yet have the boat tested at 165 and you keep it below 150 (a 10% margin).... That does you no good if a drive seizes and whips control away from you. Now if that happens and you're belted in, and wearing protective gear, and have a canopy over your head, and an oxygen system, and a chase/rescue team nearby...the probability is that you will survive. If however you and 6 friends are in the middle of a joke when the sky falls in ...the probability is that you(and your buddies) will get badly hurt.

What is the solution? How do we assure that only qualified drivers under safe conditions zoom at incredible speed over the water? We BETTER find out soon. This year alone I have heard of a 36' cat in Michigan killing a couple of people when the owner performed 100 plus mph "figure 8's" shortly after sundown. Another poor soul had his face shattered in a brand new 36 footer in a poker Run on Long Island Sound, and of course Jack Carmody is ,sadly, no longer with us after cutting back on the canopy strength of his race boat. I started this post after hearing about the infamous step vee spinout in Atlantic City that landed a girl in intensive care a few weeks ago. And this is just a fraction of the incidents going on at an ever increasing rate. Twin 29 has a good point. If we don't learn some hard lessons and kill the machismo and ego mania the Federal by God "govmint" is gonna "protect us from ourselves".

Where to start... Some years ago there were well enforced horsepower ratings on boats..based on an antiquated formula of course.... This basically was an industry mandated measurement and it worked up to a point. What it did do however was place the responsibility on boat builder's shoulders to at least try and control their product's speeds. Granted, the whole purpose of a "speed boat" is speed so I submit the manufacturers might adopt something like the following steps as a start:

1. Pool resources and create a professional driving curriculum to "qualify" boat owners before allowing them to purchase one of their faster, high end boats. This qualification would require periodic retraining and updating to remain valid...and should be supported by insurance companies in the form of reduced rates or even basic availability.

2. Install basic safety cell technology on all boats capable of over 100 mph. This would eliminate, flying objects, sharp edges, and give each passenger some kind of secure area with handles, water deflection characteristics, and protection. Some form of helmet would not be a bad idea (Bicyclists even wear them) and a light weight racing life vest.

3. Expose the folly of dangerous designs that provide either no or limited performance increases at the expense of vast amounts of safety and handling (spinning in... steps etc). This should be left to experts, engineers, hydrodynamicists, safety engineers, and designers...(See the Lavin Foundation members) to study and explain.

4. Put speed limits on Poker Runs and limit top speed to tightly controlled Radar shootouts, with full safety precautions and no more than 2 people per boat, before or after the event..... "Jet Set" running flat out 90 miles from NYC to Haverstraw to NYC proves the same thing as one good kilo run... The boat goes like hell.

5. Use forums like this to promote safety in addition to technology... Have a safety forum that disects accidents, affixing responsibility, pointing out preventive measures and keeping the chorus going... Use some discreet censorship making it "cool" to be competent, safe, and fast...rather than some of the skinhead,rascist perjoratives one reads on this site at times. Come to think of it, that is probably the most important thing we should concentrate on...being mature and responsible....leave the "Til I got High" crap to the children.

Beach Boy this may not have met your requirements for a quick fix, but it's the best I can do on short notice.... What do you have to add to the process?

T2x."