Close Call!

Southern Florida is not known for courteous boaters, nor a high level of seamanship.

The skipper of this wake boarding boat was preparing to pull his wake-boarder up out of the water going to the LEFT. So to avoid any chance of collision, I altered our course to starboard to pass ASTERN of him, giving him and his wake boarder plenty of room.

To my amazement, he gunned it just as we approached, turned sharply to his left and completed a 180° turn directly in front of us!

Geez… everyone was lucky we were only going idle speed, so I was able to yell and stop.

It could have been disastrous. I have no idea if the skipper knew I was even in the area. Instead letting someone else be the spotter, so he can drive the boat, I suspect everyone’s attention was on the wake boarder in the water.

There were about a dozen boats anchored nearby, so we slowed down. Obviously these folks are oblivious to waking an anchorage.

This was the middle of the day on a Wednesday. Reportedly, it gets worse on the weekends.

My Wyze Cam v3 Pro cameras usually record video and saves it to the micro SD card. For some reason that video was not retained, but the “AI human person” trigger kicked in so at least I have a still pic to share with you all.

Everywhere: expect the unexpected, but that is even more important in Southern FL!