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Originally Posted by Seaplane Pilot
How very true. A huge wake from a 35' Carver plowing at 10 knots can easily capsize a canoe or swamp a 20' bowrider. I've seen it with my own eyes. Just another example that this has nothing to do with speed whatsoever.
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I disagree completely. Had this cruise boat been travelling 50 mph when it hit the alledged wake, the tragedy would certainly have been far greater. Maybe every person on board would have been killed. (And I do suspect that the cruise boat probably could not go 50 anyway, but that is not the point).
On the other hand, it is now being suspected that the rogue wake was just a story, and that the cause might have been that the cruise boat was turning at too high a rate of speed, causing the unbelted fasteners to shift to the outside and the weight shift to contribute to the flip. Surely then the speed of the boat was a factor and a faster speed would have made things much worse.
The only time one could validly argue that a higher speed would not have made a moving accident worse is where every passenger and crew member had been killed. But so long as one person survived, he should be glad that the speeds were not any faster. This is just common sense, but a surplus of that has never prevented arguments on this forum.
Why do the SL opposers on this forum turn every thread into an argument about why speed was not an issue or an SL is not needed here. Let it go. This was a tragedy, not an excuse to revive the SL debate.