Are ‘Safe Boaters’ just fast, loud out-of-state boaters?

Thursday, March 4, 2010

To the Editor:

I heard about this new organization called “Safe Boaters of New Hampshire.” Sounds good. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that? Turns out it is just the latest in a string of high speed boating groups put together ad hoc to fight our boating speed limit. Safe boaters equal fast boaters? Even worse, the founder, who is a Massachusetts transplant, has a huge souped-up racing boat that he calls a “Thunder Craft” and wants to be able to race it around our lake … the real reason for his opposition to the speed limit: safe boating? And he is a member of a group called the “thunder cult,” made up of others like him who drive their ultra fast ultra loud offshore thunder boats around lakes all over the country, no doubt scaring the bejeebers out of the rest of the boaters in those states. He has a petition on his “safe boating” Web site for people to sign to ask our legislators to repeal our boating speed limit, and then he posts recruitments on all of the drag boating/offshore racing sites in other states (and Canada). He has all these “safe boaters” from who knows where petitioning our legislators. The petition does not even ask where these “safe boaters” are from. In one thread the out-of-staters saying they signed the petition outnumber the Granite Staters more than 20 to 1.

Our speed limit is working just great. It really made a huge difference in returning civility to boating on Lake Winnipesaukee so far, and we (the people of New Hampshire) would like to keep it. I don’t really care how much the “safe boaters” from New Jersey or Florida don’t like it.

And hiding behind the moniker “Safe Boaters of New Hampshire” really insults our intelligence. A truer name would have been “Fast Loud Boaters from Other States.”

ED CHASE

Meredith