Too many times while becalmed, the Mount has passed me about 200 feet away: if I hadn't been looking for the Mount's wake—I might have missed it.
It's possible that if you are on the
inside of a turn that a cruiser makes, expect the wake to be much steeper and violent. While kayaking, I heard a frothy wake curl up behind me that was above my shoulders!
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Originally Posted by Seaplane Pilot
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From the article:
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"The ski boat, which only had about 12 inches of freeboard, was swamped with little warning and both passengers plunged into the water, scrambling to grab life jackets or anything else that could help them stay afloat."
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"Twelve inches of freeboard" is about what every canoe has.
I've noted previously (some would say complained)
that my entire wooded shoreline acre is slowly losing its soil to erosion. Yes, some is due to the rare storm directly out of the north—like what struck here July 6th, 2000 at 4:28PM. But every warm weekend, without fail, a train of oversized cruisers—that weren't here in 1991—will churn my shoreline into muddy murkiness. How can their wakes continue to draw mud from the shoreline year after year?
Even gentle rains—like yesterday's—gradually replaces soil and duff from the woods uphill. And every weekend, the "replacement mud" gets washed into the lake by cruisers.
Fortunately, this entire mile of shoreline is too shaded and rocky to promote exotic milfoil growth (like the same-facing shoreline of Rattlesnake Island).
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"...To make matters worse, both offending vessels left the scene without offering assistance..."
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I'm grateful that a 3/8" mooring line
snapped that secured my family's two-ton sailboat to the dock here. There's a good chance the dock would have been pulled off the pilings by a wake that one cruiser left behind.
We caught up to that cruiser ½-mile away as he was setting a second anchor to a shoreline tree. He
seemed genuinely sorry, but four hours later, he sped away with the same disregard. Could this pennant—flown by many Winnipesaukee cabin cruisers—be part of the problem?
I hope that a warning is placed at those distant marinas and yacht clubs that support such lake-oversized boats; otherwise, I'd support an RSA keeping such boats to headway speed 1000' from shorelines: NHDEA rules on breakwaters are too burdensome for residents in bays and coves.
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"...Each cabin cruiser was violating the no wake zone,and both were throwing 3- to 4- foot- high wakes..."
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When those wakes collide with each other, the resulting wake—though brief—can be double that height: some time, follow a pair that are "racing" side by side.
From a Google search
last season, only one court case regarding wake damage could be found. It occurred in Maine and involved a fatality.