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Coach
07-04-2006, 05:50 AM
Posted on Sun, Jul. 02, 2006
TIMES WATCHDOG
Boating a perilous pastime
By Thomas Peele
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Wooden crosses bear witness to past fatalities, but do little to slow traffic at a blind curve on the narrow waterways of Indian Slough near Discovery Bay. Four people have died near the spot during the past 10 years.
Karl Mondon/Times
Wooden crosses bear witness to past fatalities, but do little to slow traffic at a blind curve on the narrow waterways of Indian Slough near Discovery Bay. Four people have died near the spot during the past 10 years.
* Map: Boating deaths in the Delta
* Audio slideshow: Water worries (Flash)
* Newsroom Roundtable: Safety Q&A with Coast Guard specialist, 10 a.m.-noon Thursday (submit question now)
* Mandatory education
* Boating tragedies
* Accident info not made public
* Dangerous waters
* Driver requirements
* Boater safety info
* Perilous pastime
Boaters who ignore or do not know basic safety rules cause 88 percent of reported recreational boating accidents in Northern California's waters, a Times analysis of U.S. Coast Guard data shows.
As tens of thousands of boaters flock this month to rivers, remote mountain lakes and reservoirs, and the notoriously dangerous San Joaquin Delta, the data show that people are often injured or killed in boating accidents that could have been easily prevented.
Boats have gotten much faster in the last 10 years. The inland waterways are narrow, curvy and unforgiving. And California does not require licenses or safety training for boaters. The combination is often tragic.
"When you have horsepower, particularly on personal watercraft and ski boats, people smell those gas fumes and they lose about 100 IQ points," said Cary Smith, president of the California Boating Safety Officers Association.
Between 1995 and 2004, there were 4,754 reported recreational boating accidents in Northern California and the two Nevada counties on the eastern side of Lake Tahoe, according to data analyzed by the Times. Those accidents claimed 364 lives and injured 3,033 people.
During a nine-year period that could be more deeply analyzed by accident location, more accidents were reported, for instance, on Lake Berryessa in Napa County, 248; Lake Shasta in Shasta County, 455; and the five-county Delta region, 1,061, than in the Pacific from Monterey County to Oregon, 191.
Eighty-eight percent of accidents in inland waters can be blamed on the behavior of boat drivers and passengers, such as speeding, drinking, inattention, overcrowding craft and letting people drive who lack the knowledge to do so safely, according to the data. In the Delta, that figure rose to 92 percent.
In contrast, the Coast Guard and the National Boating Safety Council report, the nationwide average for accidents blamed on boaters' behavior is 70 percent.
"We have so much power and strength in these boats now," said Chris Lauritzen, owner of an Oakley marina and a vice president of the California Marina Recreation Association. "There are boats out here that can go 70 mph. There are no brakes on a boat."
No training required
State law requires boaters to follow basic rules of the road. They must sound a horn when passing a boat going in the same direction. They must not go too fast for the immediate conditions, which on California's lakes and rivers are often crowded. They must raise a flag when someone is in the water around their boat, such as a skier waiting to be pulled.
But California is one of just 16 states that does not require boaters to take educational classes to learn those rules. There is no state boating license. There is no mandated training.
The data show the overwhelming need for the state to put in place mandatory training before allowing people to drive boats, Smith and other safety experts said.
"Training means less chance to make preventable mistakes," said Paul Newman, a Coast Guard recreational boating specialist.
"The problem is all you need to buy a boat is a handful of money," said Elroy Booker of Antioch, a veteran boater who is a member of the Ebony Boat Club near Isleton.
Booker said a friend recently bought a boat to replace one he has fished with for a decade. When Booker saw the new boat he gave his friend a pop safety quiz. He pointed to a red light on the side of the craft and asked "What's that for?"
The man replied "'I have no idea,'" Booker said.
The light is supposed to be lit when a boater is returning to harbor. It is one of the most simple boating rules: R for both red and returning. It is a way of letting other people on the water know a boater's direction and intention.
"He had no idea," Booker said. "None. And he's been boating out here 10 years."
Chief David James, who commands the Coast Guard station at Rio Vista, has worked all over the country during his 20-year career. The waters of Northern California and the behavior of people who boat there make him, for the first time, "fear for my own guys out there, and they patrol it every day. This is the scariest place I've seen for operating a boat."
James said he was perplexed when he was transferred to California and found that the state does not mandate boater safety training.
"It's an eye-opener when you come out here with as much water as California has and (boater education) is not a requirement," he said.
"People buy a boat and you see them putting it in the same day. Then they come around the bends doing 40 (mph) and there's no way to avoid a head-on. What you have is inexperience and too much speed."
'If there was a law'
An accident blamed on speed and inexperience killed Michael Blondell on Italian Slough in southeastern Contra Costa on May 12, 2002. Blondell, a former Navy Seal, and his wife and daughter were cruising around a bend in the slough when another boat came straight at them.
"There was very little time," said his widow, Susan Blondell. The other driver "wasn't steering properly. He kept turning right into us."
Susan Blondell later learned the other driver had never before piloted a boat. His craft was crowded with people. A teenager on board was paralyzed in the accident.
The driver was "under the influence," a Contra Costa Coroner's report on Blondell's death states. The driver was not identified. It could not be determined if the driver was charged.
The boat that hit Blondell was on "the wrong side of the channel," according to the report.
"It was his first time out on a boat," she said of the other driver. "If there was a law, if people had to have a license, I really think it wouldn't have happened."
For more than 20 years, the National Transportation Safety Board has urged states to make boater education mandatory. The last effort in California was in 1999, when Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a bill that would have required boaters to pass a written test and obtain a certificate.
Davis said in his veto message that he saw no need to make boaters "run the gauntlet of yet another government bureaucracy to obtain licenses to pilot their boats."
Mandatory education and testing in other states have reduced accidents and fatalities, said Bill Gossard, the NTSB's recreational boating safety program coordinator.
"You just can't have people out on the water driving around willy-nilly in a high-speed vessel," he said.
Most of the states that have yet to adopt mandatory training are in the West where there is still a culture "where folks don't want anyone to tell them what to do," Gossard said. "It's one of the last bastions of freedom."
Data from states that passed mandatory education show a reduction in accidents after the change. In Alabama, for example, annual boating deaths dropped 44 percent in five years, according to Coast Guard data.
Some people involved in boating might agree to training if it was made clear to them how such a system would work, said Don Abbott, executive director of the California Yacht Brokers Association.
"We really don't want licenses. Who's going to do it? What do you do about rental places? Right now, there are too many 'what-ifs,'" he said. "We need something, but how are we going to do it?"
The California Department of Boating and Waterways will conduct two public hearings later this summer to hear boaters' opinions of mandatory education. The department has not taken a position, said spokeswoman, June Iljana.
Department Director Raynor Tsuneyoshi did not respond to several requests for interviews. "I don't see a benefit to the boaters of California or the department in the director being interviewed," Iljana said.
Someone will die
North of Discovery Bay, narrow Indian Slough bends into an S-curve.
It links Discovery Bay and a popular launching ramp on Werner Cut with Old River. It is one of the more dangerous water bodies in the Delta, the Times analysis shows.
Thirty-six accidents -- four of them fatal -- were reported in Indian Slough and Werner Cut in the nine-year period from 1995 to 1999 and 2001 to 2004. Accident location data for 2000 were not available.
Fifty-three other accidents occurred on Old River -- eight of them fatal -- during the same time.
The number of reported accidents probably does not reflect all the mishaps, said Cary Smith, the president of the state Boating Safety Officer's Association. State law requires boaters to report any accident that results in $500 or more damage to a boat or an injury that requires hospitalization.
"There is more going on out there than we are seeing in the data," Smith said.
As boaters raced along Indian Slough on a recent Saturday afternoon, young men on personal watercraft, commonly referred to by the Kawasaki trademark name Jet Skis, steered toward the edge of a levee when the boats approached, similar to the way children playing ball in a street might run to the curb when a car approached.
Then, just as the boats passed, the young men gunned their motors and raced into the cresting wake as close to the boats' sterns as they could get, launching into the air, landing hard on the roiled water as more boats bore down on them, not slowing.
Revelers crowded aboard the boats, their skin glistening with sun screen and tanning oils, waved beer cans and cocktail glasses to onlookers. Few, if any, were wearing a life jacket.
"No one goes out for a day of boating and thinks someone is going to die," said Newman, the Coast Guard recreational boating specialist.
But people do die while boating, often because simple safe-boating rules are ignored.
Four deaths
On the levee above Indian Slough, two wooden crosses stand faded and cracking as boaters speed past.
A deflated balloon is tied to one with a ribbon, a tiny pink plastic heart to the other.
They stand near where Gail Vadala, Gene Potts and Dina Nuccio died in separate accidents that typify boating safety issues. A few hundred yards away on Werner Cut, a fourth person, Sott Hale, also died.
Vadala, a 29-year-old medical technician, was riding a Yamaha Wave Ventura personal watercraft when she turned into the path of a 20-foot boat that struck her broadside. A woman riding another personal watercraft next to her escaped without injury. The accident was blamed on Vadala's inexperience.
Potts, 53, suffered a massive head injury when the borrowed 19-foot ski boat he was driving collided with a 19-foot bass boat carrying three Oakland men, who survived. The accident was blamed on the drivers not knowing basic boating rules of how to avoid each other as they came around a bend. Both boats were going more than 20 miles per hour when they hit head-on, according to the database.
Hale, 41, died when the personal watercraft he was driving collided with a 28-foot motor boat at night. The accident was blamed on lack of proper lighting that might have enabled the drivers to see each other.
Dina, 6, was with her mother on a boat that belonged to the mother's boyfriend.
She "was in the water, not wearing a life jacket and was holding on to the swim platform as the boat was moving," according to a coroner's report.
Carbon monoxide from the boat's engine overcame her and she "let go of the platform and was struck by a Jet Ski the boat was towing," the report states.
Nuccio's mother, Carla Nuccio, and her boyfriend, Roger Marks, were each sentenced to two years of probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor child endangerment charges.
Carla Nuccio insisted that she did nothing wrong. "If it was windy, it never would have happened," she said.
Nuccio's father, John Nuccio, 45, of Iola in Amador County said he supports mandatory boater education. "It's as important as hunter safety," he said. The state requires anyone obtaining a hunting license for the first time to complete a safety class. Driving a boat "is like a car. I don't see the difference (between a car) and a boat."
'I won't go out'
The Times analysis shows that Vadala was one of 35 people killed in Northern California during a nine-year period while riding a personal wartercraft. All occurred on inland water bodies.
"Jet Skis are a pain in the neck," said Jim Corsaunt, owner of Marine Tech in Isleton. "They jump your wake. They buzz around your boat."
"They just go too fast," said James Mack of Dublin, a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. "Discovery Bay is a trouble spot. You get water skiers and fishermen and Jet Skis and cruisers. When you get that mix in there, it gets dangerous."
In all, there were 1,478 personal watercraft involved in accidents during the nine years that could be analyzed. The median age of the drivers was 24. More than 95 percent of the accidents occurred on inland waters, with the most, 136, on Lake Berryessa.
Berryessa is a 23-mile-long man-made reservoir east of Napa Valley. From the deck of his home high on the lake's south end, Patrick Szucs, 54, an avid boater, can see miles of water and on weekends hundreds of boats and personal watercraft.
"I look out there and I can count 200 boats, and that might be light, and I won't go out," Szucs said. "They intentionally take risks. Four boats will be coming at you and instead of moving to the side, they try to squeeze through."
A boat unlike a car cannot be slowed by stomping on a brake and even at slower speeds, people can be ejected from a boat into the water, he said. "An inexperienced driver in a boat is more dangerous than an inexperienced driver in a car."
Szucs also keeps boats in the Delta and Richmond. "People party too much and use bad judgment. You get six or seven people running around on the boat without lifejackets."
The single biggest thing that can immediately make boaters safer is to wear lifejackets at all times when on the water, safety officers said.
"We wear them every time we go out," said James, the Coast Guard chief in Rio Vista. "It isn't for show. They save your life. Life jackets are something that should key into mariners' heads when they see the Coast Guard personnel with them on 24-7."
The Coast Guard database shows the stark reality of not wearing a life jacket.
In the nine-year period analyzed, the data show that 230 of the accident victims drowned.
Of the 230 drowning victims, 157 could not swim.
Of the 157 nonswimmers who drowned, 138 were not wearing life jackets.
Thomas Peele is a Times investigative reporter. Reach him at 925-977-8463 or tpeele@cctimes.com.

JetBoatRich
07-04-2006, 07:19 AM
Eighty-eight percent of accidents in inland waters can be blamed on the behavior of boat drivers and passengers, such as speeding, drinking, inattention, overcrowding craft and letting people drive who lack the knowledge to do so safely, according to the data. In the Delta, that figure rose to 92 percent.
I am not surprised at this figure :rolleyes: they covered a lot under 'ACCIDENTS" :rolleyes: no matter what they do, this percentage will not change :rolleyes:

bordsmnj
07-04-2006, 07:33 AM
boating is bad! oh, nOOO!
think i'll come on outa the closet and go write for some liberal rag. LITERALY

Sherpa
07-04-2006, 07:33 AM
I saw those 2 wooden crosses just this past wednesday. Indian slough is
not even that bad. they make it out to be a bad area. it's not. there are
FAR MORE DANGEROUS AREAS on the delta, trust me............
the only issue on Indian slough is it's proximity to Discovery Bay.... IE: alot
of people with alot more money than brains. Parents who buy 15k worth of
jet skies, and turn their kids loose on them with little to no training in operating a vessel..........I can say this, since the ruling of having to have
a license to pilot a jetski, the delta is ALOT safer since.. it used to be 10
year old kids on stand-ups riding in every direction imaginable. but then again, most of those kids got pretty good, fairly quick since riding a stand-up
required talent. something most do not possess. the problem now for
jetskis is eqivilant to riding quads:
you sit down, and hit the gas...................... very little "talent" is required
since you're just sitting on your ass....
--Sherpa

bordsmnj
07-04-2006, 07:37 AM
i'm reading these facts and seeing an obvious spin. "230 drownings 185 or what ever couldn't swim........Bull Crap. all 230 could not swim. they wouldn't have died. and then thee's phrases like "a Time's analyst of the coastguard's study shows......" probably showed what ever this hippy fag wanted. some of this is real ,alot is rhetoric and facts presented out of context. i hate reading shit like this. it just sounds like a big attack at something i love to do. another freedom to be legislated away. i'll quite whinning now. gonna go start work on my granola powerd canoe.

Sleek-Jet
07-04-2006, 08:05 AM
i'm reading these facts and seeing an obvious spin. "230 drownings 185 or what ever couldn't swim........Bull Crap. all 230 could not swim. they wouldn't have died. and then thee's phrases like "a Time's analyst of the coastguard's study shows......" probably showed what ever this hippy fag wanted. some of this is real ,alot is rhetoric and facts presented out of context. i hate reading shit like this. it just sounds like a big attack at something i love to do. another freedom to be legislated away. i'll quite whinning now. gonna go start work on my granola powerd canoe.
Don't forget your lifejacket... :D :D :D

bordsmnj
07-04-2006, 08:15 AM
Dought! :yuk:

Old Texan
07-04-2006, 08:34 AM
I'm not arguing the safety problems and boating definitley has serious issues with poor operator skills, but this article is obviously written by a person with very little knowledge of boating. He rambles around points and seems more intent on throwing out tragic events than staying o topic and offer both the problems and potential solutions.
If the general public is ever going to be educated on water safety, newspaper editors need to have experienced intelligent reporting. Filling space with some cub reporter's notes isn't getting the job done.
Serious issues deserve serious research and competent reporting.