a man and his vessel 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
I've been a member of the Coast Guard auxiliary for seven years,but in all of the times I've been out on shore patrol during the summer I've never seen a boater act like this one did...
We got a mayday call one sunday afternoon from a boater who said he was "stuck on something". We had a pretty good idea of where he might be, and after having him give us his GPS,came up alongside about 20 minutes later. He was sitting on the deck with a can of Sam Adams in his hand,several others in a cooler next to him on his port side. Stupidity strike one-500 dollar safety fine.Two of us came on board to rig him aft so we could pull him off the sandbar he was effectively stuck on. While we were doing this. though, I happened to look up and see the boat owner looking down the barrel of his flare gun. I called out to him to put it back into it's case and not to touch it at this time. In the meantime,the two of our crew on board had tied the tow lines into place and were preparing to come back aboard our vessel so we could pull out from alongside and get him out of the sandbar.
While we were pulling out so we could tow him, he had still had the flare gun in his hand.When he put it down on the seat next to the pilot's chair,it discharged a flare that went straight through the auxiliary outboard propellor. The noise,flash,and tearing apart of it created a huge hole aft below the waterline-and as we found out later,just missed the belowdeck engine by about one inch.
We ended up bringing the man back to port on our vessel and telling the harbormaster of the whole situation. I must admit, though, it would have been quite a sunday afternoon sight to see one-possibly two vessels go up like in the movies! Submitted on 09/08/2002
Submitted by:
Deborah
Reference:
personal - summer 2002
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