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Originally Posted by Great Idea
Bear Islander,
You bring up a good point regarding "points" or corners. We have the same problem. I am always amazed at how close boaters will come to a corner or pennisula. They regularly come within 25-40 ft of the shore and our swim raft. On many occasions boats come that close at a very high rate of speed while kids/people are in the water. "Cutting the corner" so to speak. The surprising thing is that many of these offenders are residents/experienced boaters who do it on a regular basis. Don't they realize that in order to maintain a safe/legal distance from objects/shore they need to navigate their boat in an arc around a corner or point and not in a straight line. It never ceases to amaze me that many boaters are completely oblivious to this or just don't care. Any more ideas/insight as to why this happens and how to constructively address it? Speaking up or flagging them down as I have done in the past does little but anger/embarrass folks and they just continue to do it. Dive flags I realize are a poor/illegal answer however there must be something that can be done? We have had a couple VERY close calls with kids in the water and boats/jetskis.
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I see the same issue (though not as close) from time to time w/people not rounding Echo Pt. There's apparently very little neuron activity going on and people are just following the path of least resistance (straight line course), seemly oblivious to others about them. Best course of action I can suggest is to break out the camcorder or digicam and snap a video/picture* of the offender(s) and send them to the Marine Patrol. While they may not be sufficient evidence for a fine, perhaps the MP could send the owners a reminder of the 150' rule and hint they might want to start following it. I suspect if it's regularly violated by the same people, some action will happen.
*to be of any use you'll have to have the picture capture an object of known dimensions at a known distance from the camera. From these 2 pieces of information (plus the boat's LOA, already known via the registration) the distance from the camera to the boat can be determined.