How much trouble is this guy in?
 

While working at the Thunderfest this past weekend on Sat. my buddy went out on his patrol boat after they opened the river to go to the Rooster tail from the Belle Isle pits,got pulled over by the Coast Guard at Belle Isle. He blew a .22 blood alcohol level, they let his friend idle it back he was'nt drinking. How much trouble is he in, I've heard they are a little more lenient at Detroit's 36 Disrict Court. Anyone know ?

Am I reading this correct? Your buddy was a patrol boat and he was drinking?????

Jon

After the racing was finished the people working at Belle Isle side had a barbeque and beer party for the security, patrol people, etc. Everyone seemed in control. The USCG was not of the same opinion however when later people went across the river to the awards banquet, some faired better than others.

Trouble?....That's just an afterthought.

1)Lucky No one else was killed/injured/boat destroyed
2)Lucky he was not killed/injured/boat destroyed
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Consequences should be of an appropriate magnitude.

Dude, in all honesty 0.22 is way too fugged-up!

That is pretty much my thought also!

.22? Isn't that like falling down drunk?

How do you get .22 on beer at a bar-b-cue? That's some serious pounding. Was it that new Crack Beer? :eek: :D :eek:

A heapin of trouble!

Jeesh,

Was he still swigging when they tested him and he accidentally blew a mouthful of liquid beer into the meter?

I personally watched an acquaintance go comatose, choke on puke, and get hauled to the ER with alcohol poisoning. He tested a 0.25

Yikes, if you commit to patroling it's commiting to not drinking also.

I was out at SindBads & Roostertail all weekend, pit passes too... was a great view :D :cool:

He's in a heap'o trouble.
I'm no angle and I'll admit I've done things I shouldn't have but he deserves whatever he gets.
At the very least he should loose his license.
I'll bet he'll never serve as patrol again.

According to the St. Clair County Marine Patrol website, .10 for a 200 lbs. person it 6-7 drinks in a 2 hour period. Thats a glass of wine, a shot of 80 proof whatever, or 12 oz beer.

What makes things worse, if you get a DUI on the water your driver license gets effected and you car insurance rates too. That was an expensive party.

According to this equation, this guy had a beer every eight-to-ten minutes for two hours!!! :eek: THAT is a man on a mission.

Hmmm, everyone makes mistakes......but unless this guys heart pumps JD, he must have been one sloppy drunk puppy!

What about his friends? I know I would not let a friend of mine assume the driving position if he/she were that f'ed up.

It is kind of like a cop that gets caught selling dope. I bet the judge will toss he book at him. I am surprised that they did not haul him away in handcufs!

I hope at least one person reads this and remembers it next time theyre drinking. That number of 6-7 beers over 2 hours gets you to .10. It only takes 1 drink per hour to keep you there. I seem to remember from biology class that your body can metaboize out 1 ouce of booze per hour. Thats one drink an hour.

I'm not downing partying, not by a long shot, but its not much of a party if you end up screwing yourself at the end. Be careful and know your limits.

As is and always has been my position. He should be punished appropriately. THANKFULLY no one was HURT! How CARELESS and IRRESPONSIBLE can one be?:mad:

Did they give him a breathalizer 15 minutes later? Or a blood test? Breathalizers can read very high if he had even a drink of beer just before getting pulled over. They are suppose to give you another 15 minutes(I think) later to make sure it was not just alcohol in your mouth or you can demand a blood test.

If the ticket was issued in Michigan it DOES NOT affect your driver's license or driving record. However, he will probably lose boating privelages for a 6 months to a year. A good lawyer should help him get it dropped to impaired which will be a lesser fine.

Blackhawk, you missed your legal update, it DOES affect your driver's license in Michigan. Also, he may get an impaired, but impaired count the same as full blown OUILs if he has any priors.

not that it matters,

but I'm thinking....... he was a RACE patrol boat?????

i.e. trustworthy volunteer to protect spectators from entering the race route and boat drivers in the event of an accident.

I do not think that the Blood alchohol content is linear at all either. IE. 6 beers in two hours gets you to a 10 read and 12 gets ya to a 2 read. I am not sure on that but at any rate at a .22 blow the guy was obviously a slopy mess!!! I will give some of the blame to the place holding the party as they sould have picked up on it some. In MA the bars can loose their license if they send a person home drunk. The bartenders can really get screwed so they watch very close. At a bar that I was at last week we had to forcebly remove a drunk from his can and take his keys away and we then called him a cab and my buddy that owns the bar and I drove his truck home for him. He was pissed at us but somehow I am sure he did not remember it in the AM.

Jon

Vern, when did this update happen? I know they have been trying to make it go on your license but I didn't think it did yet. I know for a fact last summer it didn't. Snowmobiles did, boating didn't as of last year.

As much as humanly possible, I hope! Sorry, I have no sympathy for this guy at all. Thank God no one got hurt - someone that plastered shouldn't be driving a Big Wheel, let along a boat.

I may be totally wrong but ... To blow a .22, it sounds like he may have had a few before he arrived at the party.

Blackhawk, it was changed with the new OUIL laws. I can't remember the exact date. I wanna say last April, but not for sure.

The new law says if your caught drinkin Boating or on ORV like a snowmobile it gets posted to your driver's license. Also goes for the kids caught drinkin before they are 21.

I didn't realize that they had passed that law. I knew that snowmobiles went on your record and they were trying to do boats. I know a friend of mine got one last summer on his boat and it didn't.

Jolly, did they give him a breathalizer later of do a blood test? A BAC of .22 is pretty darned high. Quite a few years ago my buddy slammed a beer(literally) as we were leaving a party. He got pulled over about 5 minutes later and blew a .11. He tried to explain that he JUST drank a beer but they took him away anyway. They gave him one 15 minutes later and guess what? BAC of .05.

If the guy was a legit .22 then he should not have been driving anything. But, the breathalizer can be very innaccurate with certain circumstances.

I agree with Troutly about this.........

Seeing as you don't need a drivers license to operate a boat or a snowmobile for that matter in MI, what happens if you don't have a license? What do they do? Post it to the record you're going to have?

It's crazy that in MI on a boat, all of the occupants can be legally intoxicated and the operator can be drinking an open beer while underway and it is not illegal AS LONG as the operator is not beyond the legal limit. The law has been like this for years, but I don't expect it to last much longer.

I have been pulled over for a "safety inspection" after "toasting" the local lake officer with my Budweiser. I set my beer right on the deck and produced all proper documentation and was eventually set free.

I do not advocate drinking and driving of any kind, but I was not breaking the law since I wasn't beyond the legal limit. In fact it was my first and only beer of the day and I was very aware of this. In any event, it;s still legal, but I wouldn't push the limits too much or you'll have to pay the consequences, just like our friend above will.

Ranman,

You are exactly right, if you get caught and don't have a license yet the state assigns you a number and it gets posted to your record before you ever get a license. (if you're ever able to)

Blackhawk,

You are right, breathalyzer can be inaccurate if not operated properly; however, I have never seen one off more than a .05 (person just drank, like in your example) so a .22 he was plastered no doubt. Breathalyzers are not admitted in court in Mi, they are only used as part of the sobriety tests in determining probable cause for an arrest.

When I say breathalyzer, I am talking about the small portable units. The breath test you take at the jail is admissable in court.

OUIL Watercraft
 

This does not go on your road driving record in Michigan. If you were to get his (29) LEIN work they have 2 records, your road and Watercraft. And yes a ORV and or snowmobile does appear on your road record. Not sure what the penalty will be through the Coast Guard, and it may be different with a Federal agency but still not on your road record. And yes his insurance company will find out and raise his rates

I suspect there were two things happening to get a .22 reading.

First, he was probably dehydrated from being on the water for 4-5 hours. I have spent many an hour sweeping races and you just flat out bake out there-much more so than running around. There is also the possibility that he was drinking during the race and that is totally unacceptable-lives can be in the hands of the patrol boats and there is no room for that kind of bullsh*t.:mad:

Second, he may have had a fairly high "resting alcohol rate". This is a phenomenon that occurs from repetitive moderate to heavy drinking. Your blood retains the alcohol over time so that even after 8-10 hours of no drinking you still have .1 or so in there. You might feel fine and even exhibit no external symptoms but there is still alcohol in the system. I knew a girl that blew a .25 at 10:00 in the morning. She was pulled over because she was driving a borrowed car with a manual trans and it jerked on her and stalled from a light. When an officer pulled her over and smelled beer in the car(spilled from the night before) he made her blow. I had at least 3 people tell me that she had not had a drink since before 2 AM that morning and was acting perfectly normal with no sign of impairment.

I am in no way trying to take this guys side, but you need to be aware that in some instances the normal wait periods do not work and your system will not metabolize all the booze.

As always- moderation is the best policy.

id say hes in about as much trouble as he deserves to be. Theres no room for that .

I'm certainly not condoning this guy's actions especially since he was a "patrol boat", but I thought I would share an interesting story about tolerance...

Mind you, I am a responsible boater and know my limits and will not drink more than a beer or two throughout the day if I am the captain of any vessel.

I went to a boat show about two summers ago at the civic center with a bunch of friends. I was not driving. We went to the bar first where I consumed about 3 pint sized Captian and Cokes. The local bar here makes them like 50-50 too. Then we went to dinner where we had to wait 45 minutes before we ate. Another 2 or 3 pint sized Captian and Cokes while waiting and during dinner. At the boat show of course they sold beer. I had a few of those (pint sized again). On the way out, the local DEP had a little stand if you will set up in the lobby. They were trying to show the effects of alcohol while driving, etc.

They had these glasses that you put on that were supposed to induce the effects of different levels of intoxication. Basically, they just made your vision blurry.

So, the idea was to put on the glasses and try to walk the line they had taped to the floor in the lobby of the civic center. I told my friends to stop because I wanted to try it (being that I was already quite intoxicated, or so you would think by the amount of alcohol I had consumed in the amount of time that I had consumed it. Believe me, I had a pretty good buzz on.

So, I tried on the glasses and tried to walk the line. I was like "no way is this anything like being drunk" to the DEP officer...

He said "what do you mean?"

I said "I've had like 8 pretty good sized drinks in the last two hours and I don't feel anything like I do with those glasses on"

So I asked him to give me a sobriety test sans glasses.

Well let me tell you, I walked that line perfectly, did turns, stood on one leg, the alphabet, etc. He even gave me the pen test. (For those of you who don't know the pen test, it's where they hold a pen in front of you and make you follow it back and forth with your eyes without turning your head. Sounds easy until you try it drunk.)

Well, he couldn't get me. He said if he saw me on the water and gave me a test he would have to let me go.

At this point there was an audience of about 45 people watching in amazement. He asked me to stay so he could try more tests on me or maybe have someone else try, which one other guy had already done with the pen thing.

I told him "no thank you, we have to go, see you on the water!" With that, we left. Again, I was not driving, my friend was who was not drinking.

Just thought I would share that story because I still find it amusing to this day.

Now about that other guy, they let his friend idle the boat in? Does that mean he didn't get arrested? Did they just let him go or what?

Gary864 and blackhawk,

I have to eat some crow, you guys are right, I did some checking and the boating does not show up on your driving record. It never passed, and I thought it did. Learn something new everyday!

:D

Hey Ted, you were not being drien by a rather large guy that night were you?? Like in YOUR Tahoe?? Parked in the cripple section??

I think I was driving, but the night was ajust a blur..........

I'm sorry to be this way but he deserves whatever he gets.
Why if there was someone on the boat that was sober did they not drive from the outset? If I'm in someone elses boat and they are that inebriated(sp?) I would offer to drive and if they didn't agree then I would find another way to get to where I was going.
The sober person that was with him should be charged with something also.
I am glad that no one was hurt.

Caleb

All I know is I wasn't driving. Other than that I plead the 5th...

Vern Thanks but I only posted this because It makes my job easier if people understand that the will not lose their license if the get a boating while intoxicated. I have calmed down many a person by letting them know they will not lose their right to the road from the boating ticket. However if you get a few OUIL on the water you cannot captin a boat either. I have had a judge ask the boater (who lost his road priv due to drinking) how he got to the boat (without a Driver License). The person answered I drove my car, The judge wasn't amused! end of story

Gary864,

No problem, lord knows I'm far from perfect, and I can use all the help I can get!! I appreciate you setting me straight, might have saved me some embarrassment down the road!!:D

I think the news media needs to do a little fact checking. Because they are how I heard about it going on your license. HMMM, inaccurate news reports, naw never happen.:p I looked on a couple other sites, and they mention the penalties, but not the license. Thanks WDIV. Keep up the good work.

jr,

That would be the same WDIV that did the complete hatchet job on Gull Island and jobbienooner, correct? :rolleyes: I sent them a nasty email about their "story" but never got a response - wonder why?

Like 90% of the media, if they can't find a story, they'll just make one up... idiots.