Clarification
Evenstar, I agree with your opinion about enforcement of the boating laws & regulations instead of a speed limit. That has been one of my arguments against the speed limit & if you read a previous post of mine I stated that the most common infraction in my experience is the 150' law. By the way it was not necessary to cite the entire law as I am very familiar with it since I took it upon myself to become familiar with NH boating regulations when I started boating here, I have my boater education certificate & the class covers those regulations extensively & when you register your boat you are required to sign the registration after you read that there is 150' law.
The speed limit if passed will prevent some boaters from using Winni simply because it would be useless for some boaters to only cruise at 45 mph when their boat was designed to cruise faster. That is exactly the intent of the speed limit proponents. 45 mph was chosen because most performance boats cruise faster than that & they knew that. I honestly do not think the speed limit supporters are concerned with boats cruising 46-60 mph which is what many of those boats do, they just don't like them & they are attempting to elminate what they do not like. If there was a family on a bowrider cruising between 46-60 they would not be concerned & there are many boats on the market that are not considered performance boats that are capable of that. In my opinion there are many infractions of the 150' law & that becomes interpreted into they were speeding when in fact they may not have been going any faster than 25-30 mph but it appeared that way because of the close proximity. Fine, enforce the 150' law.
I do not own a high performance boat & typically cruise between 25-30 mph & I have encountered kayaks several times where they were not visible or very difficult too see because there was enough of a chop so that when in the trough of a wave they were not visible or they were wereing clothing that blended with the water or their kayak blended in with the water. The fact that they were not visible had nothing to do with my speed or the style boat I operate or any inattention on my part. I am always scanning the water in front of me. Its just a fact that kayaks are not always visible or are very difficult to see for many reasons, no way around it unless the kayaker takes it upon themselves to be more visible.
Last edited by PROPELLER; 04-04-2005 at 11:19 AM.
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