I went out sailing on sea puppy today with Cary Huhr. The motor out and back in on the waterway was brutal. Against the tide both ways with the current running 2 knots. Then add in 4th of July traffic and crazys..
We actually ended up saving a jet skier that fell off his jet ski and was having problems getting back up on it or his girl friends jet ski. I saw him fall off and his jet ski was 20 yards away by the time he was even able to look away with the wind and current carrying it faster than he was able to follow. I throtled down just a knot or two and when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to get on his girlfreinds jetski with her motored over and threw the ladder down and let him climb up on Sea Puppy.. Even though he had only been in the water for a couple minutes he was out of breath and we had to help him up the ladder.
I passed one of my longer dock lines to his girl friend and she went and lassoed his jet ski where it had floated into the shallows and tried to bring it over to Sea Puppy. That didn’t work to well but she did get it into the channel where I could circle around beside it and grab it and hold it so he could climb down onto it.
He wasn’t really in any danger as he was wearing a life vest but he was tired and floating in the middle of a very busy crossroads in the ICW. None of the other traffic bothered to even slow down so there was 2 to 4 ft wakes coming from different directions hitting him. I could easyly see one of the 40 to 50 ft yachts blast through there and plow him under and never even notice it. ( I have a particular gripe with a lot of these.. rich idiots with no training or commonsense or not common respect operating them in an unsafe manner. I will give credit to some owners.. one in 10 or so will supprise me with actually noticing what is around them and opperating their boat in a safe and courteous manner.)
After this we went on out and had a good sail….
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