Page #248, from pic #5-10 clearly shows everyone keep in line with the M41 cutting left too early, squeezing everyone else! He had ample room to proceed another few hundred feet.

After watching the vid again...another thought...there were several boats on his side, did he try to piuposely cut across to get some running room??

Perfect example. Look at the oncoming boat wake vs the trajectory of the 41 and it stays aimed at the outer wake curve throughout the pics.

Maybe he's just raising his hand volunteering to fix skater40's boat

Compare the 41 DCB's proximity to Skater40 in all the different pictures. If the 41 didn't cut the corner, then Skater40 moved well to the right. Both boats were running next to each other early in the run and then the gap between them widens siginificantly as the accident occurs. Either the 41 moved to the left or Skater40 moved to the right.

Bingo! Exactly!
If you look at the footage aprox 5 sec from the end
The blue 388 skater was far left of the entire pack .( JT throttling I believe)
When the river turned left and things got a little tight, he backed off, stayed in his lane, (held his line) and was able to turn left and pass the oncoming traffic with plenty of room to spare. If the Dcb that flipped did the same , there would have been no incident. Either he was over trimmed and couldn't turn or just decided to go for it and cross the wake for better position to be the first to the first card stop.

So if the M41 DCB did NOT change his "line" in front of other boats and the M35 DCB should have choose to make a tighter left hand turn to AVOID crossing the Rooster tail of the M41 DCB, then what would have happened to the boat to the port, left, of the M35??? It would have ran up the M35's Rooster Tail resulting in the same accident, different boat!

Its pretty obvious, the Silver M41 DCB was the first to accelerate which started a chain reaction of bad events. No one can argue that the Silver M41 DCB "jumped the gun" and took off BEFORE they were told to. That in itself is enough but to top it off they also turned left in front of the pack, with half the EMPTY lake in front of them they could have used. But hey, I guess first to the card stop means more then others lives.....

At those speeds there is not much time to react, there is NO other option the M35 had that would have been 100% perfect. EVERY option "line" they were delt with (by the M41) put them in a dangerous situation. By the time they M35 saw the M41 "take off", made a decision to join and "take off", probably checked over their right shoulder, left shoulder, looked back ahead, CHIT, no time to react!

If you watch the video , notice that the yellow race boat , crc, backed off and played it cool . if you look at the video close to the end, there was plenty of room for all boats to stay in line, make the turn and then hammer it when the river opened up . The issue is you've got to realize the throttle goes both ways, and in this instance, the thing to do when it got tight was tuck it in , slow it down tighten up the turn , and then hammer it once there was more space.

Not sure what video people are looking at that say the 41 didn't cut anybody off, but I'm looking at the one posted by Braceyourself, post 244 I think. That cut off is so obvious that Ray Charles and Helen Keller could see it... He's the only boat that took off like bat out of hell, then shot left right in front of the entire pack...

fixx
 

yeah..i got stevie wonder checking it out rite now and he said that the 41 dcb was turning left,,he also said notice all the spray coming off the starboard side from turning and the water show's it as well and nothing on the port side..