From Lock & Dam #3 ~

This will seem obvious to many on this site, but it’s not for you directly…this is for the new people that would like to fish/boat the Mississippi River.

Prior to launching yesterday, I heard some chatter on the marine radio that seemed out of the norm. I recognised one voice as being a lock operator, but I didn’t hear what was being said. It wasn’t the normal locking conversations we hear every day.

As we approached Lock and Dam #3 I waved at a group of folks in a boat that had a smaller, 14 foot boat in tow. Looks like boat trouble I thought to myself as they waved back.

Here’s the rest of the story posted here with permission in hopes of making newer (and some older) folks think about their actions if they run into trouble.

Just rescued another pleasure craft. This time 20 feet from the dam with our rescue boat. The young folks were 20 feet from drowning and hadn’t thought to put on their life vests. They also didn’t know to wave their arms in the universal distress signal.

Let’s go down the list (of what to and not to do).
* Too many people in a a very small boat.
* Did not signal that they were in distress.
* Operated above the dam rather than below it.
* Did not ask for help from any of the boats that passed by just minutes before.
* Did not put on their life vests when they knew they were in trouble.
* Had oars but did not know how to use them and actually tried to row backwards.
* Did not try to reach the shoreline which was 20 feet away.
* Did not try to put out an anchor.

In my little mind, I’ve though of many different scenarios that could happen on the river. It is moving water and the danger doesn’t have to be a dam to be life threatening.

In most cases the first thing I would do would be to toss out the anchor. This buys me time to figure out the next best move. The second priority is to get out of the navigational channel more so at night then during the day.

These people were lucky there was well trained lock operators that realized this boat was in trouble and have practice dropping their rescue boat in the water and practice actual above the dam rescues.

We could have been reading about drownings in the paper this morning.
Stay safe people!

Those details paint a very clear picture in my head…..

Dang Norwegians causing problems again?

Got to let nature take its course sometimes, then again just got done reading the “obsolete” post so not surprising.

How do you even get that close to the dam?! Anytime I am in my boat and am within 1/4 mile upstream of St. Anthony Falls I am so hyper aware of my surroundings, my anchor ready, etc.

dfresh wrote:

How do you even get that close to the dam?! Anytime I am in my boat and am within 1/4 mile upstream of St. Anthony Falls I am so hyper aware of my surroundings, my anchor ready, etc.

x2!

How do you even get that close to the dam?!

Don’t say YOU…it wasn’t ME.

Pft, I would have bailed out before getting that close….

I’ll have to look for the story of the lady that went UNDER the dam rollers when she couldn’t get here jet sky going. Traumatic.

Kris Johnson, a deputy in the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Four Seasons Patrol as told in Oct 2009.

The story goes, as I recall it: a guy and his girlfriend were enjoying their personal watercraft (like jet skis) on the Mississippi River just above Lock and Dam #3 near Red Wing.

All of a sudden both crafts stopped working and the couple was caught in the current heading toward the dam. No one was around to help.

The guy caught one of the ropes hanging over the falls but his girlfriend didn’t. She disappeared and soon he was so exhausted from the push of the water against him that he let go and was swept over the dam.

This could have been the end of the story.

But in the river just below the dam were a group of fishermen. They saw the two watercraft explode out of the water and then saw the guy near by. They rescued him.

But there was no sight of the girl.

Unknown to anyone, she had gone over the dam but had gotten lodged under the falls in an air pocket! She was alive but no one knew it. And she couldn’t get word to anyone.

The roar of the falls around her was deafening.

It got to the point that she gave up any hope of surviving.

She just knew that she couldn’t stand the roaring sound any longer and so she slipped back into the falls to what she thought was certain death.

And this could have been the end of the story too.

But instead she came up in the same party of fishermen who had found her boyfriend!

This happy ending is not the usual result of these types of traumas on the river but sure is nice to hear.

A newspaper reporter that originally told me about this said he wanted to interview the girl a couple months after the incident. She wouldn’t talk about it.

Holy cow. That would be an ordeal!

The story I heard was the the boy friend talked the girl into going for her first time on a jet ski.

I wonder if she ever got back on the horse that bucked her off…
AND
if they are still together.

I was there after their successful rescue. The looks on their faces will never be erased from my memory.

A lot of boaters and fishermen never have enough anchor rope no matter where they are at be it a river or a lake, some people just by a boat and go without a clue to what can happen

I don’t know if the boater should take 100% responsibility for that Outdraft. How does a person know what they should know?

Write the check and the boat is yours.

Sure there’s safety manuals but we know guys and instructions…