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From: (no name) (no email)
Date: Fri Aug 06 1999 - 12:46:32 EDT
Ahoy All,
Last night I was transformed instantly into a jet ski hater.
Jan and I were anchored at the edge of the channel in the ICW about a mile
north of the Little River Inlet at the NC/SC border enjoying our sundowner
when a group of four jet skis approached from the south. There were three
men, and a woman with a young girl riding with her. We waved at them as we
do to all who pass. As they drew abreast one of the young men swerved toward
us and threw an eight foot high wave of salt water up into our open deckhouse
windows. Several gallons of saltwater entered the deckhouse and sprayed
throughout the room, even reaching the windows on the opposite side of the
vessel.
Among the objects sprayed with seawater were: a table with charts, guide
books and navigation tools, bucket of c-clamps, bucket of vice-grips,
furniture, carpeting, a milk crate with about $600 of power tools, Jan's cell
phone, and 60% of the interior of the room. It took us about two hours to
clean up. The carpet will take days to dry and we are sure we missed some
places that will show up as corrosion damage later. The electrical devices we
rinsed well with fresh water but normally salt water damage takes some time
to surface due to the time it takes for corrosion to advance to the point
where the unit will fail.
The punk and his family stopped about a half mile north of us and conferred.
They reversed direction and as they passed I taped them with my camcorder.
(when we looked at the tape later they were not clear enough to identify) We
motioned and requested them to come over to us so we could show them what
they had done but they refused. They did not come close enough for us to see
their registration numbers.
We called 911 to report the attack. This started a chain of "it's not my
responsibility", "we can't do anything about it", "it's not in our
jurisdiction", and other buck passing. The 911 operator we got was in NC but
did not tell us of this fact. Little River is in SC but she did not know
that. Some time was spent talking with what we did not know were NC
authorities who could not help us. Jan was on the phone for about an hour and
has a long list of useless varieties of cops. In the end the only cop that
said he could do anything was a SC Dept of Natural Resources Officer (game
warden) in Little River, the only water cop in Horry County. He told us that
even if we could identify the punk, the only thing he could do would be to
issue him a warning citation. Of course, I could always hire a lawyer and
take him to civil court.
In one second flat this teenaged punk changed my attitude toward jet skiers
from "They don't bother me, it looks rather fun", to "I sure wish one of
those turds would dump about twenty feet in front of my cutwater".
Norm
S/V Bandersnatch
Anchored Little River Inlet
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