speed limits on the Lake

[tis]

Originally Posted by TiltonBB

Speed has never been a safety problem on the lake. Most jet skis, and many power boats on the lake today, can and do regularly exceed the speed limit without incident.

It was a "feel good" law to begin with to pacify a certain crowd. The major accidents that have occurred on the lake in the past 25 to 30 years had nothing to do with speed. When those accidents occurred, the operators were within the current speed limits, even though the speed laws were not yet in place.

Even the go fast boats with the loud exhaust pass through an area, leaving a minimal wake, and are gone in a matter of minutes. And, the state has requirements to limit the maximum decibel output of a boat. I know people who had to remove their boat from the lake years ago because they were unable to muffle the exhaust sufficiently.

Noise and wakes from the wake board boats are a much bigger problem. The shoreline and dock damage are an issue but the loud stereos, designed, not for the occupants of the boat, but to blast music across the water, are a much more disruptive nuisance. And that is a problem when they set up in one area, blast music (sometimes complete with F Bombs) and seem oblivious to the sound travelling for miles. In one wake boarding excursion they can easily disrupt the peace of the occupants of 50 to 100 homes.

I my opinion that is a much greater problem than speed ever was or will be.

I totally agree with you.

[Descant]

Actually, the speed limit issue is posting a number of the same issues that were posted before when it first came up a decade ago. The Big Big Big benefit is it brings the Forum back to lake and lakes region and gives us something instead of Covid issues to talk about. I try not to read anybody's Covid posts but sometimes they creep into "new posts".

[lakewinnie]

I have said this before. In 30 years of boating on the lake, I have never been put in danger by boats going >45 mph. In the last 10 years, I have gotten bow-swamped, shaken and stirred a number of times by wakes from wakeboard boats.

And if I had to take one over the other, I would rather hear loud engine noise than loud rap music.