Not a headline I ever thought I'd write, but here we are. Vehicles were piling up on Cedar Lake in Indiana on Sunday, as an attempt to save a brand new Pavati wake boat from the depths resulted in both a Jeep Wrangler AND a Ford Raptor making appointments in Davy Jones' locker. There's a lot to digest here, but the pictures and the video show quite a mess.
Now, first things first: go easy on this guy. He was losing a very expensive wake boat for unknown reasons and did his best to save it. Can't fault a guy for trying. If I saw my $300,000 wake boat going down, you best believe I'd be in the lake too. Nothing is gained by mocking someone who's having a bad day. I'm sure he knows what happened wasn't ideal. If anything, there's a couple lessons to be learned here.
According to the posts making the rounds on social media, the apparently brand new Pavati wake boat started to sink. The likely scenario is the boat was at full ballast and a cooling or intake hose came loose, thereby overloading it when it was already low in the water. According to a neighbour of this house/cottage, the owner had used the Jeep before to launch/recover boats (and it may have been equipped with a snorkel), so it made sense that Plan A was to send it out again. Except the lake swallowed up the Jeep, resulting in Plan B. That involved getting out the Ford Raptor to save the Jeep, but that didn't work either. When plan B failed, the video cuts and we can only assume that a dedicated recovery boat was probably called to extract all three.
In the end, it might have been wise to deploy a helicopter, and ironically there is one in the background sitting on shore. Nonetheless, hindsight is always 20/20 and with this boat owner's luck being 0/3, it's always easier to brainstorm ideas when you're not in the midst of a mess.
We'll all seen bad boat ramp fails, but this might be the first time I've seen 3 machines go down in one shot. It's also the first time I've seen a pontoon boat pull up to watch he show like it's a movie (with its docking lights on?), and a couple kayakers exploring the scene like they're going sightseeing at a shipwreck. Help your fellow boaters, people. Next time it could be you doing donuts at the launch ramp.
Thank god for insurance.
