Inviting tragedy on a Vermont lake

By Ted Cohen VDC

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The U.S. Coast Guard is always reminding boaters to wear life jackets, to be prepared for the worst.

But, judging from observations made Sunday during a visit to a boat launch on Vermont’s largest lake, stupidity reigns supreme.

Or maybe stupidity is too generous a word.

Possibly it's just pure boneheaded ignorance.

After all, stupidity suggests a certain measure of sentience.

Two cases of the utter lack of common sense were immediately apparent during Sunday's observations.

The first was a young couple with two tiny children preparing their trailered sailboat for a day on (unpredictable) Lake Champlain.

As the two kids scampered about unsupervised on the boat-launch's floating docks their parents were preparing to put the boat in the water.

But boat is an exaggeration. The catamaran was roughly the size of a hot tub, much too small for two adults going out on a potentially choppy lake let alone with two children barely able to fend for themselves.

The toddlers were wearing life jackets but one flip of that tiny overloaded so-called boat and you're looking at two drownings if not four.

With any luck they made it back to shore alive.

A second case of ignorance was two guys dockside getting ready to go out in a small motored Bayliner for a day of fishing.

One guy couldn't get the Evinrude started. The motor was trying to sputter to life, but with little success.

The second guy then took over, finally getting the motor running after it spit out massive volumes of black smoke due to an obviously faulty carburetor or plug, or both.

Finally, motor sputtering, stalling, restarting, they headed out to the open lake with big grins - and no evident life preservers.

With a faulty engine and no oars on board in case they became becalmed.

Clearly a disaster waiting to happen.

Hopefully they too made it back alive.

It's really hard to imagine what people are thinking when they decide they are ready for recreational boating but in reality have no clue about the lurking dangers.

All it takes is an unpredictable misfortune and a beautiful sunny Vermont day on the water becomes the Coast Guard and fire rescue looking for drowning victims.

It happens all the time.

For the last recreational boating season of which records are available, the Coast Guard reported 3,887 incidents nationwide that left 556 people dead and 2,170 injured.

To see why people die on the water, go visit your local boat launch and just observe.

You will be astonished at the ignorance playing out before you.