jetbikes

[derekh]

Last Sunday, caught in one of those mizzly rain situations when visibility drops to 150 yards. wipers did their best which is not quite good enough. It's time like this I love my GPS as I motor at 24 Knots. I look over to the port side and see two jet bikes approx 100 yards away and making tracks to cut across my bow. 'Silly bu++ers' I thought and backed off to 15 Knots. Then they stopped right in front of me at which point I was two miles from shore. Evasive action was taken and I enquired of them what they were playing at. I got the bird and other signals which never appeared in my day skipper course. It is starting to become obvious why more and more harbours, beaches and marine facilities are banning jet bikes. I am sure every boat owner on this forum has at some time been endangered by dickheads like the ones I have encountered. Perhaps we all should get bigger rope cutters.

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[rich]

Last Sunday, caught in one of those mizzly rain situations when visibility drops to 150 yards ! i motor at 24 knots ! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! errrr.

<hr width=100% size=1>rich ) <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.jersey-harbours.com>http://www.jersey-harbours.com</A>

 

[ccscott49]

24 knoits in 150 meter visibilty? who's endangering who? I bet they didn't teach that on your day skipper course either!

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[derekh]

well visibility was probably more than 150 yards. I was driving at a safe speed but that is not my point. During any conditions it takes a rather silly person to stop a jet bike in front of a boat which is obviously not stopped. I also own a jet bike but I have respect for my own life as I do for others.

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[Happy1]

I am no mathematician (if that is how you spell it), but at 24knts how long does it take to travel 150yds, they would not have seen you, or if so had a split second. I guess they stopped like startled rabbits in the headlight of a car thinking is this Tw&t really going that fast in these conditions and about to kill us? best you sue your instructor for failing to teach you about safety of lives at sea, and kill your speed in conditions like that before you kill someone else, it may be a boat 20 x your size doing that to you next time /forums/images/icons/wink.gif

<hr width=100% size=1><font color=purple> "You only see what you recognise, and you only recognise what you know" <font color=purple>

 

[ccscott49]

I think we are all aware of these bloody idiots! There is always an element of idiots who spoil it for others, just as there is/was with motorbikes.

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[tcm]

If a PWC (or several) aims directly for a planing motorboat on a flat sea he is wanting to play in your wash - they come from ahead, and leap over wash travelling in a sternwards direction. Quite unnerving first few times, but harmless.

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[jfm]

Re: plse dont blame the jetbikes

Shouldn't tar all with the same brush. Even if these people were dickheads, then the issue is the dickheadish behaviour, not jet bikes per se. Jet bikes are just machines and by far the majority are owned by sensible well-behaved people. So banning them on grounds of hooliganish behaviour by a minority is unfair on the others. Otherwise we would ban all Ford Capris and Vauxhall Novas too. (I dont have a jet bike, by the way)

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[ccscott49]

Re: plse dont blame the jetbikes

Sorry, but the majority of jet bike riders are not sensible, not in my experience anyway, I'll see what the forum thinks1

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[oldsalt]

24 knots, 150 yd visibility!!!!??? Says it all really.

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[kingfisher]

Shoot the buggers!

Well, one schooner captain nearly did. But if I were ever to find myself in that position, I think a nicely aimed flare would do the trick. Basically they're sitting on a high speed fuel bomb. If they go for my wash and they miss by a few degrees they ram my boat, and someone is going to get hurt. So s°d off, let them jump over their own wash.

By this time you probably guessed I hate the contraption from the bottom of my heart.



>From the May, 2002 issue of SAILING magazine.


Schooner v. Jet Ski: Warning Shot Justified

The U.S. Coast Guard arrested the wroing man, an administrative law judge in Maine suggested in March when he cleared Capt. Neal Parker of charges that he assualted a jet skier who was threatening his schooner.

Judge Peter A. Fitzpatrick ruled that "the Coast Guard has failed to prove that Capt.
Parker assaulted the jet
ski operator. Indeed, the evidence on this record shows that Mr. Marves (the jet ski operator) may have assaulted the captain and the others aboard the Wendameen."

That's what a lot of people thought after learning of Parker's plight (reported in
Full and By, January 2002
SAILING). His alleged "assault" consisted of the firing of an antique pistol loaded
only with a percussion cap toward the water to warn off a jet ski that was on course to collide with his schooner at high speed.

The ruling ended an eight-month ordeal for Parker, who faced the loss of the mariner's license he needs for his livelihood. Parker sails his 90-foot (LOA) charter schooner Wendameen out of Portland, Maine, on overnight cruises to nearby anchorages.

Wendameen was anchored in Pulpit Harbor on North Haven Island on July 25, 2001, with the seven paying passengers and the crew about to have dinner on deck, when a jet ski piloted by a 20-year-old lobsterman started performing what the court described as "high-speed, unsafe and harassing maneuvers around the
schooner." When Parker signaled him to slow down, the jet skier responded with
shouted obscenities and sped away. "Suddenly," Parker recalled, "the jet ski turned and bore down on us at full throttle, square for our transom."

After Parker fired his warning, the jet ski stopped some 10 from the schooner, and its operator, according to the court record, "threatened to do bodily harm" to the schooner's passengers and crew.

Parker called the Coast Guard, but it was he, and not the jet skier, who was charged.

In the decision, Judge Fitzpatrick wrote, "The reckless actions of the jet ski
operator ultimately threatened the safety of the passengers and crew . . . The principal culprit in this incident is the jet ski operator."

The judge noted that Parker had held his captain's license for 25 years with no
violations and has an excellent reputation as a professional seafarer.

Going to sea as a teenager, Parker, now 45, worked his way up through the ranks of crews of traditional ships on the East Coast, and went on to serve as master of a number of vessels. He bought Wendameen, a virtual derelict, in 1985, and spent four years rebuilding her. Built in 1912, the yacht was John Alden's first schooner design.

In connection with the jet ski incident, Parker was found to have violated Coast Guard regulations by failing to get approval from the Coast Guard commandant to carry black powder aboard the schooner. In giving Parker a
sentence of six months porbation, Judge Fitzpatrick observed, "This requirement was not widely known among the vessel owners in the schooner fleet in Maine or even to the Coast Guard inspectors."

--Bill Schanen


<hr width=100% size=1>Group of people on the pontoon: skipper is the one with the toolbox.
http://sirocco31.tripod.com

 

[jfm]

Re: Shoot car drivers!

Steady. That's one cae. I could cut and paste several reports just like that, only the culprit was in a car not on a jetski. This story does not mean all jetskiers are bad. There is a tar-with-same-brush attitude here which is quite unfair to sensible jet-skiers.

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[Mangusta]

Re: Shoot car drivers!

Some car drivers deserve to be shot, the difference here is that the minority you talk about are in fact the majority.

Which owner of a Jetski is ever going to own up to poor behaviour. They need to be legislated of the water into zones where they can annoy each other with their sill little pranks and leave other users to enjoy the water.

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[Guest]

Re: Quite right

Perhaps we should start an "I spotted a polite, sensible jetskier" forum to redress the balance.

Our latest incident involved two jetskis coming off Studland beach. One aimed directly at a man standing in chest deep water, at full throttle, turning at the last minute and covering the guy with his wash, before tearing off. I got a mouthfull of abuse for pointing out that he was 200m inside the 280m 6 knot limit...

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[ccscott49]

Re: Shoot car drivers!

Lets face it, the vast majority of jet skies are either owned or operated by morons, the vast majority of cars aren't. Plus how many jet skies are there and how many cars! Equating bad car drivers with bad jetski drivers is ridiculous! not IMHO

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[TomIsitt]

Hmmm...hoist by your own petard, methinks (24 knots in poor visibility).

The general tone of this thread is deeply depressing...a couple of bad experiences (and we've all had them) doesn't make the majority of PWC riders a bunch of inconsiderate halfwits that should be legislated off the water. The huge majority of PWC riders have no interest in riding near other vessels or near crowded beaches...they don't want moaning old gits giving them grief all the time. If we legislate them off the water, we'll be next (for driving at 24 knots in poor visibility, running over swimmers off Bournemouth, etc).

There are annoying people from all walks of life doing things that irritate us...let's not get all Daily Mail and suggest they should all be flogged/banned/sent to a penal colony.

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[jimi]

oh go on ... let's have proper penalties for bad people instead of namby pamby poofing about. Penalty for peeing someone off in a PWC should be to do the fast Condor Cat ... between the hulls!

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[TomIsitt]

Always fancied trying that. I believe it has been done a couple of times, or maybe that's the marine equivalent of an urban myth.

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[BrendanS]

Praise the Lord! A sensible response. There are a few idiots with pwc's, but there are more idiots with raggies and mobo's.

One chap in our club, youngish and a regular, has just bought a pwc. He's a safety boat regular with years of experience, and boats with another member who has more years of experience than most here could dream of. He cannot afford a boat of the type that most here aspire to, and his new pwc is his pride and joy. He'll prod it along at as anyone of us would have done when younger, but without any danger of causing distress or harm to anyone else. He's spent too many years on rescue boats to do anything else

Please don't put all PWC users into the same category. There are idiots, and there are sensible users

<hr width=100% size=1>Err, let me know if Depsol enters the forum, I'll go and hide

 

[Renegade_Master]

Your right there Matt thats exactly what they do. Off Margate one day doing a spectacular 17kts
in the Crown, being semi dis lots of wash, and two skis approached at speed from my stb and leep the wash.
Frightened me the first time. Second time the guy fell off but seemed to enjoy it. They were just having
fun and it was fun watching them, but they were doing it in safe waters away from other people and boats
so no probs.

<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.suncoastmarine.co.uk>Sun Coast Sea School & Charter</A>