Michael Daly said: > In open water, make yourself as visible as possible and assume the other > guy is an idiot. Have you ever noticed that with an entire ocean to play in, these idiots always want the drop of water immediately under your boat. Two weeks ago, about 6 of us were heading back to a harbor in Southern CA and were paralleling a breakwater at the harbor entrance. We were about 100 yards away from it and having an interesting time of paddling through the incoming swells and reflected waves off of the rocks. Just then a man in an inflatable with a very young daughter (maybe 7-8) sitting between his legs and driving the boat, made repeated high speed passes at us. The closest land to us was an island 11.5 NM away on the ocean side of us (where they were) so they had plenty of maneuvering room. They must have made 9 or 10 passes at us. I was bracing with one hand while my other hand was in my day hatch trying to get my flare kit out. I was ready to see how a 12 gauge flare would do against a rubber boat. ;-) Short of shooting them, how do you deal with idiots like this? We know they saw us because they would head directly at a boat and turn at the last minute. Once is an accident, but when they kept coming back for more........ Steve Holtzman *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jun 18 2002 - 00:12:59 PDT
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