One of the worst aspects of being a dockmaster on the Erie Canal is having to deal with boats that throw a wake.
You see, the speed limit on the Erie Canal is ten miles an hour, but in a zone where there are boats docked, that drops down to 5 miles an hour and/or NO WAKE.
Every vessel is different; some boats throw a wake at lower than 5 MPH. PWC (personal watercraft, jet skis) throw a wake just looking at the water. You don’t even have to start them up.
Anyway, the point is, the only way you can know if you’re throwing a wake IS TO LOOK OVER YOUR SHOULDER BEHIND YOUR BOAT. The gauges in your fancy boat, even if they read six knots (which is faster than 5 MPH BTW) will not tell you if your snowflake of a boat makes other boats jump up in their berths and crash into concrete walls in a way that upsets all and everything aboard.
Only your eyes can tell you this. Waves and whitewater. If you got that, you got wake.
Lets back up a bit.
A wake is a wave produced by a boat moving through the water. I know that sounds simple, but you would be amazed at how many people with too much money and not enough sense have no idea what the term means.
They can buy a boat, why can’t they put it up on plane in a harbor where other boats are docked? They have no idea. And if you yell at them from the dock, they get pissed, because hey, they spent a lot of money, and shouldn’t have to pay attention to rules, and politeness, and understanding of how water and boats work. Money, gas, throttle, zoooooooooooom!
The title of this piece refers to the fact that large boats require skill; so generally, and I do mean generally, the larger the boat, the more skilled and conscientious the captain. This rule has its exceptions, but generally, it’s true.
Smaller boats require less investment, which scales with less intelligence and/or knowledge of the rules of the road. And by intelligence, I mean if you spend a fuckton of money on a boat, you might learn how to use it. Again, this does not follow with my experience of boaters. Even huge boat captains can be assholes. But generally, that’s not the case.
Anyway, the funniest exchange we had this season was early on when a 40+ yacht of recent vintage ($400,000 by my least estimate) rolled up into Fairport at a smarter than polite clip. They hailed the bridge, and asked for a lift. As dockmaster I gave a warning. The radio exchange went something like this:
FAST BOAT: Fairport bridge, we’d like a lift.
FAIRPORT BRIDGE: I’ll get her right up.
DOCK MASTER: Uh, Westbound vessel, this is a no wake zone, please mind your wake.
FAST BOAT: Roger that Dockmaster, we’ve got an inboard 37 computerized navigation system, we have to maintain this speed for bare steerage
DOCK MASTER: (long pause) I’ll give you points for the excuse.
FAST BOAT: (laughter from the crew in the background) It’s no excuse, I've been a captain for two years now, and I have to maintain bare steerage.
DOCK MASTER: (no response)
Because what do you say to that? That’s a lot of money for a boat that doesn’t go slow? How do you dock? Do helicopters follow you around and throw you a line when you want to stop? The crew was guffawing in the background, because they knew their captain was full of shit. I’ve been a captain for ten minutes and I know BS when I smell it.
The truth is, It’s just easier on everyone involved to slow down. Shit, you have to stop anyway until the bridge is up. It’s like racing up to a stop light. What is the point?
Today was just another example of why boats should be licensed just like aircraft.
We were getting ready to get underway on the Belle when this 34 foot Rinker came roaring through the harbor ON PLANE. The Colonial Belle Captain was the first to give them a shout. I was on the dock and yelled. Bob, our new dockmaster piped up. Meanwhile, all the poor boats in the harbor were slamming into the concrete and the pilings were leaning out in a scary kinda way. The captains excuse on the Rinker? “We didn’t know the rules.”
If you don’t know enough not to throw a dangerous wake in a harbor where other boats are docked, you need to park your boat and give the fucking keys to someone who has the sense not to be a dangerous piece of shit. Seriously. I want to know what these guys think when a boat goes by and slams their expensive beauty into a wall? But then again, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. They don’t think that far ahead.
“We didn’t know the rules.” He said this on the radio. Now, let’s disregard the fact that you couldn’t use this excuse if you drove at 70 miles an hour through a school zone. Let’s look at the fact that we often load up to ten wheelchair-restricted senior citizens on the Colonial Belle. What if this yahoo had been planing by at that time? What if he knocked our ramp off and spilled an eighty year old on the dock?
Don’t throw a wake around other boats. It’s that simple. It should be printed on every console on every boat in the World.
And word to the wise, it’s how we spot the real boaters from the fakes.
