Boater Courtesy, Attitude, & Etiquette: Outboards vs. Big-blocks & Deep-Vees

[pyro]

I need to vent! I see this stuff, and it drives me nuts. I witnessed a lot of these attitude differences at Hardy, and it makes me feel good to be in the company of all of you outboard guys. You are some of the safest, nicest people, on and off the water.

For those now familiar with the venue in question, Hardy is a "pond", a reservoir of sorts, a dammed-up river-lake, over 20 miles long, and up to a mile wide at the downstream end. Outboards run up to the shallower, narrower, calmer upstream end on the weekends to hang out and race, starting before noon. It's a 17 mile long trip to the sandbar. I arrived at the sandbar early, along with Kibbey, mercstv, bigdaddy, and the other guys. We pulled out boats tightly together to leave room for the other outboards, who arrived shartly thereafter. Outboards like to park on the "inside" protected side of the sandbar first, leaving the heavier boats to park on the exposed river side, or beach on the submerged portion of the sandbar. If someone shows up late and we have a narrow spot to park on the back side, we wave them over to the spot and help them land their boat in the shallow water. We move out boats closer together to make room for our fellow outboarders. On the other side of the sandbar where the big boys park, when there's a 25 foot gap to park, the deep vees will double-park right in the middle. Guys will idle back and forth, looking for a good parking spot, but none of the parked boat owners bother to move the boats around to make room for them. As soon as someone leaves, they pull their boat to the center of the gap left behind.

The outboards come to the sandbar to get away from the offshore traffic, hang out and race a little. You can only go upstream a short distance beyond there before the water becomes too shallow, but the 40 footers insist on cruising past the sandbar again and again, with nowhere to go. They have the whole damned reservoir to run on, especially from the dam to Brower where the river is hugely wide. Instead, they drive right down the middle of the river past the sandbar at a fast idle, throwing wakes and getting in the way of the racing activities. Some of them actually ran past the sandbar at full speed, not a safe thing to do. Making big waves, running WFO down a narrow river with bend at each end of the straightaway. There's no room to stop if you come around the corner at 70 mph to find another boat at idle. A couple of big Fountains did this sh** several times. They would come around the bend at full throttle, run straight past the sandbar, and continue around the next bend at speed. This is rude to the people beach-parked 25 feet away, and dangerous. At least most of them didn't run through on-plane, I'll give them kudos for that. Several boaters had to wait for quite a while before enough of the traffic cleared out to make some "no wake" WOT runs and drag races.

Out on the big part of the river, I'm cruising along, and a 28 footer with driver and passenger standing up to see over the front, comes cruising by no more than 25 feet off my port side, damn near washing me out. There's more room to run, they don't have to be such asses and come so close. Outboarders don't do this sh** unless they're waving to some friends.

And why do they rev their open-exhaust engines as they pull up? Does this "clear them out" or do they do it just to be cool?

Let's hear some more offshore/IO/bigblock/deepvee complaints. Someday, maybe we can all be courteous boaters in each other's company.

-Chad

[airpacker]

Must be a local thing. I can assure you thats not the way we do it up here.

[PhastBoat]

Not knowing you, except for your posts. I would think they were purposely Phucking with you!

[baja200merk]

Not knowing you, except for your posts. I would think they were purposely Phucking with you!

thats funny schit!

kevin

[rottenbrock]

There was one guy here in a cigarette boat that almost ran us over one time. When i told him to watch it he said my boat belonged on the lake. I then told him his was an offshore boat so get the **** off the shore . When he finally got off his boat i got my point across in a more direct and physical manner . After that day every time i saw him i punked his ass out. My pet name for him was FATASS . I havent seen him in a couple years now. I wonder why ?

[pyro]

I didn't get involved with any of these people, I simply observed this stuff while parked at the sandbar having a few beers. Nobody had any reason to f*** with me specifically, since I am actually a very friendly guy. Maybe I'm just holding people to a high standard, expecting the Golden Rule or something. I guess I'm asking way too much.

When I say "Offshore", I'm talking about the big I/O's with the typical gold chains/fake boob girls and fancy airbrush jobs. I wasn't expecting the East coast guys to start defending these "West coast mentality" types so quickly. I'm very surprised. Maybe I picked a few bad apples.

[Riverratt]

I dont have a problem with fake boobs

[rock]

These clowns are everywhere. The simple fact of it is they don't care what their wakes are like because they aren't affected by them. When you park a 5000 pound boat on the beach it doesn't much matter what hits it. Until a wake throws your boat up on it's side or completely swamps it I guess you just aren't aware. The other side of this deal is they are in $100,000 boats and they are better than most of us. Don't believe it, just ask em. I know it doesn't apply to all of em but it seems the biggest weiners are in the biggest, most expensive boats. A little courtesy goes a long way. Some of them just don't get it.
Rock

[Hottrucks]

"I dont have a problem with fake boobs"

Yea what he said!!
But I have run into this a time or two on larger lakes I guess its Kool !! What I think is Kool is whipping his azz some evening when the lake calms down,and he has all his buddies with him!!
If that isn't enough try watching the boat ramp and see how they load theese things

[vwfreak]

We've got some of those guys on our lake too. I think everyone does now.
They're not all bad. It's the wanna-be's that are the problem on our lake.

The guys with the Fountain's, Eliminators, etc...and have been around for years and are never a problem, but with all these newer "performance-ish" I/O's with thru-hull exaust on the water, the locals are getting really pissed off.

I love loud pipes too, but they can flick the silent choice switch on most of these smaller hulls when crusing slow & or waterskiing/tubing close to shore, but don't because of the cool factor I guess.
Kinda like a fart can exaust on a Honda Civic. It's not really freeing up that much hp on their V6 I/O but it sounds fast. Right? The airbrush work & the gold chains I think are much like vinyl stickers on a Honda. (Instant hp gains!)

I actually had a lady about my mom's age call me on to race them in one of these "performance boats" two weekends ago. Her husband was more than a tad embarassed when I walked past them with my Stinger. I guess they saw 75hp on the hood and thought I was an easy target.

vwfreak,

[beko21]

Most of those phukers are overcompensating for something.

[chynewalkr]

pyro, ill stand right by you on this one. we see plenty of those guys over here in the chain o lakes area. usually they drive in packs of 3 or 4 24' baja outlaws.


Id like to think if i ever ran into a large amount of money, I would still remain the same humble person i am now and not turn into an ignorant ahole, but un'till that happens i wont know.

[Hottrucks]

Id like to think if i ever ran into a large amount of money, I would still remain the same humble person i am now and not turn into an ignorant ahole, but un'till that happens

If I hit it my boat was on the cover of Family and Perfomance Mag. a couple of months ago!!

27' Eliminator with twin 300X's ran over a 100 mph first day out with out set up!!!

Yea all that and a stab'n cabin!!!

[chynewalkr]

stab'n cabin, my vandal has one of those, its smaller than the backseat of an 85 iroc camaro though

[Ted Stryker]

I'm with you on this one Pyro... Us fast boaters used to have good place to run here in my area on the Red River, but I see endless crap like you spoke about and it burns my ass up... These peckerheads will launch their ski boats and ski for hours right in front of the launch...It's like driving through a slalom course of genetic mishaps and Jet Skiers doing hairpins just to get 2000' from the launch... I used to keep quite and just play the calm thing, but now I'll call it to em' like I see it... Some things are just BS... Oh, and for tose jerks that are kicking up those huge Pig Boat roller wakes, they're legally responsible for damages resulting from that.... When I get rich and buy a few hundred acres, I'm gonna dredge a long narrow haul ass strip in the middle of it just for me and my boat buddies to break parts on without all these friggin' a$$hole skiers...