RE: catalina27-talk: Mandatory PFD usage in Maryland

[Phil Agur]

Oddly power boat shops have been promoting dragging your kids around hanging on the back teak swim platform of inboard competition style ski boats as Teak Surfing. A fun sport for those who would put kids in the water next to spinning fixed prop. Imagine reverse gets hit with 400 horsepower to the prop. Actually promoted by shop owners, they had a shop owner do an on camera interview after the fatality and he was casual about it.   The child that died here was simply overcome by the carbon monoxide and let go. Neither mom nor dad noticed when he let go since they weren’t keeping a lookout (like required with a skier.) It took days to find him so I think he wasn’t wearing a lifejacket either. The coroner said the CO concentration was so high he would have died anyway even if they had gotten him right back.     A power boat engine runs much richer fuel mixture than our modern automobile engines so the CO output is many times that of a car. I think its run at 14:1 instead of 12:1 since there is no catalytic converter to protect.   Boating deaths to CO have historically been ruled a drowning by coroners since they often nose over the rail but a recent CG study of CO levels in drowning victims and found it was quite high in good weather victims. They had one case where a guy fishing off the deck of a house boat just happened to be downwind of the generator exhaust and nosed in.  Previously they though it was a swimmer near the tail pipe issue.     Phil Agur                    s/v Wing Tip Commodore,             Call Sign WCW3485 IC27/270A                   MMSI 366901790 www.catalina27.org      Vessel Doc# 1039809 -----Original Message----- From: catalina27-talk@memberclicks.com [mailto:catalina27-talk@memberclicks.com] On Behalf Of Deborah Meyers Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 3:09 PM To: catalina27-talk@memberclicks.com Subject: Re: catalina27-talk: Mandatory PFD usage in Maryland   OK Phil,   John and I are both confused and need some education.  What is "Teak surfing" and what the heck is "Tailpipe sucking"?   Deb My ignorance is showing!