Close calls lead up to boating fatalities

SANDPOINT - If luck has been sparing boaters who run aground on Bonner County waterways from serious harm, that luck has run out.

"The law of averages is catching up to us," said Lt. Cary Kelly, supervisor of the Bonner County sheriff's marine patrol.

More than a dozen boats have run aground over the past two seasons, but their operators have managed to escape serious injury, according to a tally kept by marine patrol Sgt. Ron Raiha.

In some of those instances, boats have miraculously threaded the needle through stands of trees at Priest Lake, landed harmlessly in pastures along the Pend Oreille River or become wedged on Lake Pend Oreille's rocky shoreline.

"These are just flukes that they didn't hit something solid," Raiha said.

And those are the known incidents where boaters misjudge their proximity to the shoreline and structures. Marine patrol officials say some boaters involved in crashes summon help from friends to extricate their damaged vessels, often because they have been drinking, and go unreported.

But two deadly crashes on Lake Pend Oreille this summer have brought that lucky streak to a halt.

Darby and Amber Campbell of Sunnyside were killed when their boat collided with the Long Bridge on the night of July 3. Jay Edgar Smith was killed when the boat he was in ran aground at Sourdough Point on the night of Aug. 13.

Sheriff's officials determined operator error and intoxication factored into the crash which killed Darby Campbell, 30, and his 34-year-old wife, Amber. The crash involving Smith, a 44-year-old Oden Bay resident, remains under investigation and sheriff's officials have not yet divulged who was driving, although there was evidence of alcohol consumption aboard the vessel.

An element common to both of the deadly crashes, however, is excessive speed at night. In both instances, the boats were traveling in excess of the 25 mph nighttime speed limit on Bonner County waterways, said Kelly.

But Kelly contends even 25 mph is too great a clip at night.

Momentary distractions can cause inadvertent but dangerous changes in course, vehicle headlights can get confused with other illumination on shore, and deadfall logs that can be tough to spot in the daytime can be almost impossible to see at night.

Patrol boats are equipped with radar, infrared imaging and other navigational gear, but Kelly said marine deputies don't come close to reaching the nighttime limit.

"We don't go more than five or six (mph). Eight miles an hour is as fast as we ever go unless we're on an emergency," he said.

Navigational hazards aside, marine deputies are routinely dispatched to rescue boaters who get lost on the lake by mistaking terrestrial illumination or run out of fuel after losing their way.

"They don't realize how easily they can become lost," said Sgt. Anker Rasmussen.