THE BOAT AHOLIC
Nick Burnham: “I nearly killed a man with my boat”
Inearly killed a man with my boat. That sounds melodramatic, and maybe it is, but it was way closer than I ever want to be again. It was August, a bank holiday weekend beckoned, and I had taken Friday off to stretch it a little further and go boating. First task was to fuel up, and Marianne and I were headed to Brixham to do just that. Around the edge of Torbay are 5 knot markers. They’re about 1/4 mile from the shore and are there to protect swimmers, kayakers and other inshore users. We were in no particular rush, so were following them a respectful distance offshore at a lazy 20 knots.
It was calm, with just a gentle breeze ruffling the surface into a thousand white stars as they reflected the sun’s glare. Marianne shouted just as I spotted him – almost directly ahead, the faintest flash of flesh – one of those thousand dots was a swimmer, head down doing the crawl parallel to the coast! I swerved away and we passed him way too close for comfort. I cut the power and looked behind, utterly shocked. The wake washed over him and he stopped and looked at us for a moment and then continued on his way. Satisfied he was okay, I eased on the power. “I need to go back and tell him just how dangerous what he’s doing is,” I said to Marianne. “You’ll just get a mouthful of abuse,” she replied. I knew she was right so pressed on but my conscience niggled at me. “I need to at least try” I said eventually, and spun the boat round, retracing our steps. We spotted him about half a mile back. He’d turned through 90° and was making directly for the shore, now back safely inside the 5 knot markers.
I dropped back to 4 knots and followed him until we reached him. “Hi there” I called in as friendly a tone as I could muster. “I’m not having a go, but you do need to know that you are absolutely invisible out there, it would be very sensible to stay within the 5 knot markers, we almost didn’t see you”. Marianne was right. Apparently he was within the 5 knot markers the whole time, it was all my fault, I was a danger and he was going to report me as soon as he got to shore. I gave him the boat name and said please do so – I knew exactly where I was and I could prove it (GPS trace on the plotter). After more abuse we gave up and left him to it.
It shook both of us quite badly – there is simply no way you can hit a person with 3 tonne of Jeanneau and expect anything but the worst possible outcome, even before considering the propellers…
So what can we learn? Having replayed it a thousand times, I console myself with the fact that we did everything right. We were well into unrestricted water, travelling at low speed and both keeping a good lookout. But the what ifs… What if I’d been alone and fiddling with the chart plotter? What if it had been a Jetski doing 70mph? What if it had been a boat with canopies up? (We were both standing, looking over the tinted screen).
I think all we can learn from it is a reminder to be alert and expect the unexpected. And really hope that our abusive swimmer uses a little common sense in future – he has every right to be there, but surely a responsibility to ensure he can be clearly seen?