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Sea Kayaks Techniques Bulletin Board
Re: thunderboats
Posted By: Lee In Response To: We are SAfe! (dave mcadoo)
Date: Saturday, 23 December 2000, at 6:32 p.m.
so that's what those are called, a friend and his co-leader of a local kayak tour company was about to lead a large group (10 paddlers) across a 100yd channel in the Chesapeake to an island about 1/4 mile away. The boat traffic was 5-20 mph with breaks in the traffic safe for the group. The channel was marked off well with shallow 4-6ft water towards the shore and island 1/4 mile either side. He was waiting with the group on that nice warm calm day near a channel marker, a guy in the group said "we can make it across in no time",,his co-leader said "what do you think?",,, my friend had people of such different paddling skills that if they went at their own speeds one person would be across while the other was half way, so keeping the group together would be a 2 mph affair at best. "Nope, this is assuming too much." So with crystal clear visibility for as far as one can see from sitting in a kayak he decided it was better to be on the safe side and turn back to shore to have lunch. Just as they turned around and started paddling back a group of "thunderboats" came roaring down the channel at very high speed (maybe it was "only" 45mph). Even though this channel was 1/4 mile from shore and parallel to it the water was fairly shallow on either side. Those muscle boats came down randomly in groups with one or two shooting out of the channel and around the group of kayakers that were not in the channel. He told me this story later in the day after I had taught two classes and he had finished the trip. "hey , how'd your day go?" ... He looked just a bit beat and said "I almost got 10 people killed today". I'm sure the sailboats and smaller powerboaters in the channel weren't too pleased either.
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