Boating Under the Influence...

Back when I was about 20 a bunch of my co-workers and myself decided that we wanted to go to Lake Lanier for an afternoon of hanging out on the lake. No problem right? We rented one of those big old pontoon boats and got out on the lake. We drank and swam and drank and drove the boat around.

Late in the afternoon we decided to head on back. We had all been drinking, some of us a bit more heavy than others and the driver was going a bit too fast. As I understand it you can't go too terribly fast on a pontoon boat and you have to be real careful about hitting wake and stuff. Apparently we WERE going too fast and hit a wave from where a previous boat had been going across our path. The boat went almost vertical and we were all thrown to the end, some of us in the water. A couple of folks had minor injuries but that was about it.

Of course the boat wouldn't run after that and we ended up getting a tow back to the marina. We were extremely lucky that nobody was hurt worse or even killed. I didn't think about it at the time but operating under the influence is a much bigger deal than you would think.

There are boating safety courses that you can take and a ton of Boating Education information is online as well. Take a look at some of the resources about Boating Operating Under the Influence if you have a couple of minutes.