text: 4 boats crash in Ca. and no one on OSO starts a thread??? - Page 4 - Offshoreonly.com
  http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/s...hlight=big+cat
  Here's the thread with some eye witness reporting.
  Wow, I am very glad to hear no one lost their life, it appears from one photo someone was very close to it.
  I think the best points were made by Chris sunkin, OSG, GLH and el Indio. Thanks for the great advice and comments guys. I appreciate it.
  For Poker Runs being called 'not a race' it seems that a lot of people think and act like they are. I love to go fast in my Scarab, but I do it safely, lots of room between me and any other vessel. We must start using the big head and not the little head when on a PR or the insurance companies will consider PR's a race and put us out of business.
  So far......Sounds like your run of the mill equipment failure kind of accident where just so happened to be a couple of other boats nearby and was hit. Happens on the streets daily. Not by negligence or "Maverick-like" behavior. I think the insurance companies aren't going to go ape-sh$t so much as everyone thinks.
  Unfortunately for the Jag owner, skaters don't have brakes!
  Is that the 30 skater with the arnsen setup???
  Rumor has it, that the 30 Skater with the Arnesons had some issues with one of the drives and a number of its mounting bolts being broken before the run. The saftey director and resident offshore expert told the owner it would be fine to run like that.
  To continue the rumor that maybe will be backed up with arial photos soon, that the drive in question on the Skater broke loose at the start causing the chain reaction.
  More info. and photos to come.
  Please, no safety advisor worth his salt would ever say it's OK to run with a surface drive about to tear loose.
  Did you miss this post?..................
  One can only hope that's absolutely false. I've witnessed too many tech inspections and have seen what lots of racers have brought to the track under the premise of "hell, that's good enough!" to hold out alot of hope.
  One thing is for sure, 12-abreast race-style starts aren't something amateurs in pleasureboats with pasengers should be doing. Don't be surprised if this eventually eliminates you running with a side-by-side buddy, whether through insurance prohibition or statute. In case no one's noticed, there's an assault going in directed towards our sport. Noise, wildlife, peaceful boating for the 98% of boaters who are non-performance hobbyists and now safety. it's going to be a damn shame when the day comes that the only way to performance boat is sanctioned race events.
  By the way, insurance companies don't care about why an accident happened- they care that they are paying claims and whether they are subjecting their shareholders to excessive risk. When the numbers don't work anymore, they up the "in" column or stop writing as many have done. Poker runs have become races- that's because the promoter knows that's what the entrants want.
  If the local M/C club or BMW owners ran a poker run thru your town and did it with the express intent of it being a day-long match racing event, you'd scream bloody murder.
  One more thing to think about- I don't seem to ever hear of these accidents on the great lakes or in the ocean. It seems like they're mostly on these little bathtub-sized lakes.
  i have a hard time believing Rik would get in a boat with one his drives known to be incorrect....
  Not much room for error on a small lake or narrow river. On the Mohegan sun run, we were running in open ocean for a long time...I only saw 3 other boats the entire ocean section of the run. Although if it happened in the ocean, and I'm not saying you would say this, someone else might say, "do you really think these boats should be running out in the ocean with huge waves like actual offshore races?" I don't have an argument either way...I just want to drive my boat.