I tried to stay clear of the channel from the 3rd to the end of the weekend, but Sunday evening (the 7th) I had to come though the channel at about 4:30 PM heading into Paugus bay.
I knew it would be crazy, and I was right! It looked busier than the photo above! I tried to leave extra space in front of me in case I had to react to something. Of course, everyone kept cutting in front of me. Oh a special thanks to the para-sailing boat that tried to pass me on the right as we were entering the channel while going by Weirs beach. There wasn't enough room, but he appeared to want to pass me. Normally I would have just slowed and let him by, but I knew the current wouldn't allow for this.
As we're going under the bridge, the pontoon boat that was 2 boats in front of me seemed to decide at the last minute that he would stop for fuel at Thurstons. He seemed to stop and try to come back to Thurstons so that he was heading into the current as he pulled into their dock (or the current just took him further than he expected). As others have said, the current was particularly strong as the dam was probably fully open trying to control the high lake level (checking the data chart for the dam, I see the dam flow was about 1789 CFS at this time). With large number of boats in the channel, and the current as strong as it was, this was not the time to try to stop for gas at this particular time.
Then the pontoon boat started skidding sideways due to the current.
All the other boats stopped and tried to wait for him. Then everyone started to skid sideways. There was a police boat there too, he just turned on his blue lights (thanks, that helped a lot!).
I sounded my horn and tried to tell people not to stop, but i didn't help. I'm not sure what was going on behind me, as I was focused on where my boat was headed and what those in front of me (and to the side of me) were doing.
While shifting my twins forward and reverse to try to hold position (it wasn't going well), my port engine quit! Perhaps I was shifting too fast? It had never done this before and I didn't notice it at first until I saw that the boat wasn't following my commands. I furiously tried to start the engine, and wondered why it wouldn't start, until I noticed it was still in gear.
I came much too close to the rocks and thought I was going to lose my props, but I finally started the engine and got the boat in position again after being perpendicular to the channel.
I'm surprised the police boat didn't ask people to keep moving.
I'm sure we gave everyone in the area a good show! I had to change my shorts three times after that!
To anyone that saw this, I'm sure they wondered what happened, I'm not sure what it looked like to someone that wasn't in the middle of it at the time.