http://www.scout.com/outdoors/wired2fish/story/1746548-boating-accident-filmed-during-tournament
The "official" story is that a locknut worked off in the steering and they lost control.
Unofficial story is a Bow Hook that thru them and probably broke the steering nut.
Quote from: Eli on January 18, 2017, 07:27:36 PM
What should they have done different?
I see they were caught in the wake of a lead boat. That can often grab you boat and push you in an unintended direction. In this case something caused the front of the boat to grab the water and the motor pushed the boat around in a circle. Nasty...
Watching the video you can see him look back to the left as He is getting ready to pass the boat in front of them ( the camera distorts how far away the boat is, it's closer than it looks. )
They look to be full speed, trimmed as far as it can go to get max lift and trying to pass other boats at take off.
Looks like they didn't trim down or slow down as they went over the boat wake and it caught them by surprise how rough it was.
Usually when that happens the first thing they do is chop the throttle, get out of it quick. That is the wrong thing to do as when you suddenly get out of the throttle the nose of the boat drops immediately and the transom comes up and the skeg / prop clear the water......with no prop/skeg in the water to act as a rudder/steering, the V of the bow catches the water and flips the boat around a quick 180, which threw them out.
Once you suddenly let off the throttle at speed and are not trimmed down, the front V of the boat becomes the steering part and will violently turn the boat when it hits a wake or if the boat is not perfectly straight.
They let off just as it crossed the front boat wake, the nose dropped, the V caught, the prop/skeg was out of the water and the force of the forward boat motion and the nose catching the wake turned the boat 180 degrees in a split second.
You can see how violent the torque was, that may be what caused the " steering bolt " to come loose.
This happens a lot , especially on take offs for tournaments where guys are trimmed out to the max and flying trying to pass other boats in a small area.
If you run enough with your boat eventfully you'll encounter a similar situation, might not be as rough as this one, but you'll feel the front end want to flip the boat around.
What you should do in a situation like they had is to trim down a little and ease up the throttle a little as you go thru the turbulent wakes then trim back up an go.
Quote from: Eli on January 18, 2017, 07:32:07 PM
Kill switch and real life jacket always...
Absolutely.
He had the kill switch attached, you can see the boat stop immediately after it flipped. The one kid had an inflatable that worked, neither was hurt.