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Beer and boating dont mix in Texas

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  • Originally published July 5, 2008 at 6:19 p.m., updated July 5, 2008 at 6:19 p.m.

“The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.”

Every now and then, when I was a teenager boating on Galveston Bay, I’d have to dodge a head-on collision with a boater coming at me -- his steering wheel in one hand and a beer in the other.

When my Dad was first letting me loose in his best boat, which could rev up over 50 mph, drunken boaters were the very first danger he pointed out to me.

Dad, who had quit drinking many years before my first boating lesson in the early 1950s, really hated boaters who carried beer coolers on board. Actually, he didn’t hate them, he just hated the behavior they exhibited along about the fourth or fifth can or bottle.

“Watch ’em son,” he cautioned me, “They’ll kill you.”

If you’re boating today in the bays, rivers or lakes of Texas, bear in mind that every time you crank up that outboard engine, and engage the prop, you’re venturing out into the waters of the nation’s deadliest state for boaters.

Sad but true, 52 people lost their lives last year while boating in Texas, according to figures from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

The pace is a little slower this year, thank goodness. Nevertheless, 23 boating deaths have occurred since Jan. 1.

Many of them are so preventable, and it saddens me to say that in a third of those deaths, alcohol was a factor.

Officials suggest that boaters adopt the “designated driver” technique that automobile drivers use to increase their chances of making it home alive – them and whoever is coming toward them at a given time.

And boaters should be aware that the law has tightened up on the waterways over the years.

Any boat driver with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 or greater is intoxicated and is boating illegally, according to state law.

Even on a first conviction, the guilty party faces up to a $2,000 fine and as many as 180 days in jail.

Subsequent convictions can get as costly as $10,000 in fines and 2 to 10 years prison time.

But, as costly as that may be, the price in human lives is far more tragic.

State officials say that big holiday weekends, such as this one, always see a peak in boating fatalities.

Don’t turn into one, please, and don’t put yourself in a position where you might hurt someone else.

Fun doesn’t have to hurt.

Jim Bishop is a senior editor for the Advocate. Leave him a message at 361-574-1210 or jbishop@vicad.com or comment on this column at www.VictoriaAdvocate.com.



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