Learning Safe Water Practices The Hard-Way

Submitted by iedude on Sun, 09/09/2007 - 1:40pm

We spent this last Saturday afternoon at Silverwood Lake. For those of you not famaliair with Silverwood, it's a great place for boating, waterskiiing, jet-skiing fishing, or just a 'day at the beach'. It's close-by, and easy to get to - from interstate 15 (several miles north of Devore) just take the 138-Exit (aka, the McDonalds exit) and follow the road and signs about 10 miles until you reach the lake. From our home in Rancho Cucamonga, it's about a 30 minute drive.

When we arrived at 8:30 Saturday morning the lake was nearly deserted and there wasnt even a line at the boat-launch. We met several friends who had already setup a place on the beach for us, complete with food and SeaDoo's for everyone to ride. As our friend boated us to our spot we were greeted with someone we didn't know riding one of the SeaDoo's into shore, we also noticed we were being followed by a boat. As we beached the boat we were informed that one of our friends who was riding one of the SeaDoo's had "bumped" the SeaDoo into the boat that was following us. Assuming the boat-owner just wanted to trade insurance information at first we didn't think much of it, but a few momenet later when we asked how the driver of the SeaDoo was, we realized the day was about to change.

It turns out that our young, new SeeDoo rider was traveling at about 30 miles per hour when he struck the boat nearly head-on. He noticed the boat comming at him moments before impact and had attempted to begin turning-away, hitting the boat body-first, semi-sideways. The impact resulted in a broken shoulder, 2 broken ribs, and a collapsed and punctured lung. He was airlifted to the hospital where he underwent emergency surgery for his lung injury. The boat, and Seadoo were virtually unscathed since he sacraficed his body as he placed it between the Seadoo and the boat.

Most of us still enjoyed the rest of the day and even rode the unlucky Seadoo but I think we were all just a little bit more careful after seeing what can go wrong first-hand.