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Random Quote: LIFE IS SHORT FISH HARRRDDDDD.......
I have signed up for fishing tournaments in the past, made it to the inlet, and just said "not today boys". My friends who fish regularly with me have never objected, but I have been given grief by novice guys who think it would be great "to jump the waves".
You are right Birdman,its up to the captain to insure everyones safety. Thats why we invest in life jackets, epirbs, kill switches, and radios, too bad sometimes we miss the common sense.
I didn't personally know the boaters, but offer my prayers for them and their loved ones.
Captain's choice to go or not go. Or maybe we should say the boat owner's choice. Too many times the owners of boats don't have either the training or common sense to make these type of decisions. Often the guy who owns the boat doesn't realize that he, by the simple fact of ownership, is the captain. Thus as the time comes to make choices it comes from a different prospective than that of a true captain or may I say a true leader. Training and education are the key to making good decisions. Any Sunday cruise on American's waterways or a visit to you local boat ramp will show you how many real captains there are versues how many just boat owners there are.
Tony
"LuredAway"
The only person that doesn't make a mistake is a person that doesn't do anything
Right the F**k on Birdman.... The guys who are missing/dead are responsible... PERIOD!!! Too many damn people in this world want to blame someone else for THEIR stupidity and they ( the families ) now smell the bucks!!!
Having fished many tournaments I can tell you that eveyone I ever entered had a disclaimer RIGHT on the entry form that the "captain" of the vessel was soley responsible for the safety of his vessel and its crew..END of FREAKING story. Yep lifes not fair.. the BIG boats can run when the smaller boats cant... its called calculated risk... these guys rolled the dice and it came up craps!!! I feel sorry for the familes but their blame is misplaced... is the husbands fault.. not the tournament promoters.
In the end its called stepping up to the plate and taking responsiblity for ones OWN actions.. NOBODY forced them to go out in shitty conditions.. they made that choice and now their families have to live with the consequences of their actions.
1)The boat owner should turn back/never go out if conditions are poor. A stupid contest is not worth it. He should hold most of the blame but not all of it. Of course we don't know yet what really happened and it could have been just a freak accident.
2) The promotors should have called the thing off if conditions were that bad. They should hold some of the blame as they are the "Captain" of the event.Better to be safe than sorry as there is always next weekend.
3) The Coast Guard/Gov't - Why in the heck do they still allow new boats to be made without proper flotation? In this day and age, a new boat should not sink. It's funny that the Coast Guard buys unsinkable boats for its crew (Whaler, Mckee) but could care less if your 25 footer sinks to the botton the first time it swamps.
With that said, I sure hope for that 1 in a million chance that the find the guys stranded but ok.
Give me ONE good reason why the promotor of the event should be at fault...just one....fish at YOUR OWN RISK!!! And wanting to blame someone for your husbands stupidity is not a good reason!!!!!!!
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Give me ONE good reason why the promotor of the event should be at fault...just one.........
I've got to weigh in on this. Hit's close to home since I was working on my boat early SAT morning in Woodcleft Canal (Freeport NY, next to Hudson Canal (home of Hudson Anglers)) and decided to turn on the VHF knowing the tournamnet was scheduled but the wheather was bad. Everyone on their way out was bitching about the wheather, why didn't they call/postpone the tournament,I want my money back, etc. I believe approx 250- 300 boats were signed up, half never left the dock that morning, half attempted, half of those turned back, leaving maybe 50-75 boats that attempted to fish.
First things first. Two of the lost crew were featured on the cover of "NorEast Saltwater" with their 192 lb. Mako just last week. These guys had "the fever".
The event started at 6AM. According to reports the "Eleni's" first MAYDAY was called around 9AM, the position was reported as "12 miles SE of JONES Inlet". So either the "Eleni" left late and/or it took them approx 3 hours to go 12 miles offshore ?? Were the seas rough ?? You betcha' .
The coast guard tried an initial search but gave up " after several hours" (noon time ?) after finding nothing.
The tournament apparently notified the coast guard at 7PM that the Eleni was overdue.
The coast guard realized that the overdue boat from the tournamnt fit the profile / name of the earlier MAYDAY and began the search in earnest (10 hours later).
What the hell happened here ?? When the Eleni first encountered trouble, there were probably 10-20 boats, fighting their way out, in close proximaty to their position. I guess no one was monitoring channel 16 (I was on 68, also there was some confusion as to what channel was the official "tournament channel").
I could go on and on. In the age of information, four people and a boat disappear within 12 or so miles from the beach and with fellow fisherman all around them.
It seems this was an experienced crew, whatever happened happened quickly.
Reports of the weather boat from the tournamant rporting "5 foot swells" can't be overlooked.
The blame, ultimately lies with the captain.
A better system of communication between tournament boats, committee, and USCG should have been in place, however.
I just bought an EPIRB and will fish the Woodcleft Tourney next week (weather permitting !)
My condolences to any family / friends of those missing.
I read some mention of 5-7 ' seas , That day the seas were an HONEST 8-12 with an occasional 15 for most of the day as confirmed by 100 people.
Also should add the Wellcraft had a notched transom.
Think about that for a second.
I wouldnt even consider taking that boat out in that slop, who would?
I agree that the fault here probably lies with the captain: if the weather was as crazy as everybody suggests, he should not have gone out.
But in court it will not be so black and white, and will not be the way a jury in this case will hear the evidence and be charged to make a decision. They will be asked whether there was negligence involved in these disappearances and, if so, how much in losses (lost income, companionship, pain and suffering, etc.) it caused. Then they will be asked to apportion the percent to which various parties' negligence contributed to the loss. They might come back with a verdict that said that 80% of the responsibility for these deaths rests with the captain, and that the other 20% lies with the tournament operators for not discouraging people from going out on such a bad day. If that's the case, they will be held liable for 20% of whatever losses are determined by the jury. So, if the total damages were $20 million, the tournmant operator would be liable for 20%, or $4 million. Almost certainly, if the boat is recovered, the lawyers will try to prove negligemnce on the part of the boat maker for some defect that made this particular rig likely to go down. Wellcraft is a far deeper pocket than the captain, no?
When the case is heard, the lawyers will argue that the captain relied on the presumably more expert tournament operators' judgment that there was no need to cancel the tournament. They didn't cancel, the captain and crew figured that the operators knew what they were doing, and the captain went out. As people who like to think we're expert boaters, we may think that's a weak argument, but it is likely to be very appealing to a jury of non-boaters that has to decide how and whether to take care of the orphans that resulted from this tragedy. And you can bet that the lawyers will use challenges to keep boaters off the jury.
Here's an analogy -- suppose a kids' league runs a big soccer championship tournament. A big thunderstorm starts, but the tournament operators do not specifically cancel the play. A couple of kids get struck by lightning while running around after the ball in the middle of the field. Who's at fault? The coach, for not pulling the kids off on his own? The kids' parents? The tournament operators? You know that the lawyers will try to put as much of this as possible on the tournament operators, because they will be the best insured. Same in this case. These folks will go after the best insured, and it's silly to criticize them. In the same boat (to use a bad pun) as the survivors of these four fishermen, almost everybody would do exactly the same thing. Just as in virtually every case, insurance lawyers do everything legal and possible to beat deserving plaintiffs out of what they are owed. That's the American way.
I agree, there will be a lawsuit and there will be damages awarded. It doesn't matter what people like us with good common sense think. But I wonder what the four who perished here would have answered if you had asked them six weeks ago if they would fish in these dangerous conditions? My prayers go out to the families, but I am left wondering what really happened. Natural curiosity, surely we can learn something from this. I want to believe some good will come from it. Odd that there has been no debris, I find it just unimagineable that these men weren't wearing flotation. Awful tragedy.
Reel...nice post, I think it pretty well sums up how this will play out....regardless of the nautical spin of the captain & his ship that's promoted here(which is valid, but won't carry the day), a court of law is a very different place.
When you consider if the tourney promoters said, "today is off, let's do this tomorrow" (likely) would have prevented the incident, it's hard to imagine a jury ignoring that. I'm sure Wellcraft has it's eyes wide open too.
Reel, your analogy doesn't work for me beginning with the fact that those were adults in that boat, not kids. In this case, I blame the Captain for his own fate, not that of the others. If they were all adults each was individually responsible for his decision to step off the dock and into that boat -- was the Captain holding a gun to their head?
Some other thoughts --
"...almost everybody would do exactly the same thing."
Ah yes, the "...everybody else is doing it so why shouldn't I..." rationalization. Perhaps true, but that stands as sad commentary about our society.
Glad to see that this post turned out the way I had hoped and glad to see that there is still common sense out there. Yes I do feel bad for those lost and their famlies but a law suit. I guess the money is to help hid the greif. A sad Eye opener it is indeed.
nomad - good topic. just to let you know, the boat that went down was fishing the freeport hudson anglers tourney, not the " montauk" star island "$400k" tourney.
I hear you, but your sentiments do not reflect the way the courts work. What the jury will hear is that the three passengers were not experienced boat people, that they knew little about the dangers of the sea or the capabilities of the boat, and that they assumed in good faith that the captain and the tournament operators knew what they were doing when they opted to ignore the conditions. That's a good argument: how many people have you taken out who don't know the difference between a nasty chop and life-threatening seas?
This argument is not unlike the argument that would be made by the survivors of passengers on an airliner that crashed when it should not have gone up. In these cases, passengers usually figure that the flight crews and controllers know best, and would not put them into harm's way if they had any inkling that it was too dangerous to fly. Same thing for the recent deaths on roller coasters and snow hikes: how would anybody unfamiliar with these things know when they were in real danger?
The "what they are owed" comment is a general one, not necessarily related to this case. When people genuinely are wrongly killed or otherwise screwed, they ARE owed by the people who did them. In such cases, the defense lawyers almost invariably try to reduce damages by digging up and presenting to the jury all the dirt they can on the victim. The argument generally has two parts, one related to the victim's contribution to his death, the other to the claim that he was not much of a loss anyway.
The first part runs like this: it may be true that our negligence killed the father of these four kids, but he was also at fault. Even though our defendant was drunk when his truck jumped the road divider and hit the victim head on, the victim would have been able to get out of the way had he been paying proper attention.
The second part of the argument is that the victim was a scumbag anyway. Here, the defense argues that we don't owe the family much because, for example, the decedent had only a low level job where he got only mediocre evaluations; we found a neighbor who testified that he "liked a beer" (a tendency they will try to paint as life-shortening alcoholism), and his old girl friend came in to testify that he did not keep his word to her (and thus presumably would have deserted his kids anyway). Geez, this widow and these kids probably are better off without this guy. She's still young and attractive, and will find somebody better; he'll be a better husband and father than this dead SOB would ever have been, so our defendant actually did the family a favor by killing him.
The "everybody does it" argument is a reality. It's easy in the abstract to say that the noble thing is to stay out of court, but it does not work that way when it really happens. Widows in sudden death cases do not simply say: "Well, it's true that John left me with these three kids and hardly any insurance, but he should have known better than to get on the boat. So, I'll just suck it up and let my kids suffer rather than go see a lawyer to see if we have any legal recourse." EVERYBODY with half a brain goes to a lawyer in sudden death cases, if only because their relatives and friends press them to do so.
If, God forbid, some friend or member of your family ever loses someone in a sudden death (a fate I earnestly hope never occurs), you'd probably encourgae them to see a lawyer, too.
I am NOT a lawyer, by the way. But I have worked as a consultant or expert witness in about 600 cases, and have a pretty solid understanding of the strategies in these things. It is what I have seen, over and over again.
Uh-oh -- we are getting off boating into something else. Wiley will throw me out if I don't shut up now.
Anybody got an explanation of why nothing has been found of this boat? No life jackets, no clothing, no nothing: howcum?
Although I have to agree, ultimately it's the CAPTAIN'S RESPONSIBILITY, there are also others to which some degree of resposiblity has been overlooked. This includes the people running the tournaments, and extends down to even us fellow boaters. In some ways, many of us bear some responsibility. Just look at some of the posts on this board regarding "how far offshore can I go...", etc. (can anyone honestly reccommend 20-30 miles offshore in a 20 ft boat?!?!)
If nothing else, something VERY positive has already come from this tragedy. Although, discussions on many of these boards have become little heated, and might even have swayed from the issue at times, I think alot of us a taking a second look at safety, including the HA, the Coast Guard and all of us boaters. And anyone pompous enough to think they have reached the point where safety is no longer an issue for them, they should really think again. Stop pointing fingers, and try to be a little more constructive with your criticisms.
I for one appreciate the fact that their sacrifice will make me safer, and believe discussions like these were long overdue. It's just a shame we are a minority here.
I agree completely. I bought my first boat in 1959, consider myself a pretty good seaman (but know enough to recognize how much I have yet to learn), and think it is asinine to venture offshore in seas like those off Long Island last weekend. I have a center console in part because I think it makes good sense to stay inshore on days when one would need a cabin to go offshore. Sportboating should be fun, rather than an ordeal, and no fish, trophy, or award justifies putting life at risk. If you really need to put yourself in harm's way, do it for a noble cause: join the fire department or the Marines.
Unfortunately, too many people have too little respect for the water. Maybe that's the result of ignorance or inexperience, or maybe, too much testosterone. The absence of any evidence of where these guys went down -- wasn't anybody wearing a jacket? -- make me suspect this was a testosterone case, and remind me of what my Dad's best friend used to tell me. He is a retired commerical fisherman with 60 years offshore, and knows the Atlantic and the Gulf from George's Bank to Galveston better than I know the Long Island and Jersey coasts. He always told me to be careful in deciding when to go out; to stay on the radio and the radar while offshore on even the nicest days; and to keep in mind that even the biggest balls don't float. Sage advice from a guy who has been there and knows.
Maybe talking about it will keep other guys out of harm's way. What a shame.
The only idiots who should responsible are the idiots who choose to go out in crappy conditions... NO ONE made them...
I would be interested if there is a disclaimer in the tournament rules about the CAPT being responsible for his safety..NOT The tournament committe.....
Jesus H. Christ when will be grow up in this country and bear responsiblity of their own actions....and not put blame on the blameless...
