Actually amazing how well it held up, not the sheet metal building part but the pontoon base. Very stable and basically unsinkable esp. for what looks like a 1970s model lol.
Capt Sirl Shit, that old boat took a beating. I'd say it could hang with the best of them!! A new one would have been over and done with in 90 seconds!
Well, the dam has a considerable amount of water going over it that acts as a buffer and keeps the boat from slamming into the concrete of the dam itself. I would think that with enough ice hits over hours or days, it would eventually punch a hole in a pontoon.
+merkin22 I think it depends on where in the world you live. I've always been taught it's a low head dam, and it's referred to as such in boater safety courses. However, yes, a quick look at google defines it as a weir. I think it's like a trunk or a "boot"
No kidding, I'd never be standing on that cement outcropping either like that group is doing taking pictures. All it takes is one mis-step to the right, and its all over.
Seems like a difficult way to wash your boat but look at the bright side. It will be squeaky clean "No dust or dirt in the corners" and ready for a fresh rebuild.
I can see the Craiglist ad now: *JUST WENT THROUGH A MAJOR TEARDOWN AND INSPECTION. READY FOR YOUR NEXT PROJECT BUILD. THE SKY IS THE LIMIT WITH YOUR IMAGINATION ON THIS VERSATILE, OPEN PLATFORM!*
Hey everybody scroll down the comments and catch a glimpse of all the armchair superheroes putting down the spectators for not risking their lives swimming thru chunks of ice with the magic hook and rope that they all carry at all times so they can save the heavy ass pontoon.
If anyone tried to save the boat they would have died. They would have gotten caught in the same recirculating submerged hydraulic jump that was keeping the boat pinned against the dam, until they drowned.
Your only chance to get out of hole like that would be to ball up and try to let the curtain push you down deep where you would come up at the boil line downstream. But it still might just pull you back.
you cant tear those dams out they are there for a reason, to keep the water levels high enough for water intake valves for water town ans city water supplys as well for sewage treatment plants, plus for navigation.
If you were on the boat, you'd want to try to keep it lined up down river if possible, that exposes less of the boat to the water going over the dam. Definitely stay away from the dam, there's literally tons of force going over it every second, and it wouldn't take much to knock you off. Some of those ice chunks were probably 500 lbs. or more.
Obviously you wouldn't want to be on that boat to begin with, but see how it eventually veers over to the side at 6:06. You could literally jump off from the boat into the shallow/quiet water beside it separated by the concrete. Sure, it would be freezing cold, but it looks like a better option than trying to grab onto that wall and falling directly into the dam. You'd certainly have to time the jump right with all of that movement on the boat, as well. It looks like 3-4 seconds max after each jerk of the boat in between the time where it hits the water going over. You'd have to recover quickly from the jerk, stand on the outside of that railing and jump as far away as you can into that still water. Those pontoons might stand up for hours, though...as long as they don't get a hole in them. The main thing is having the strength to hang onto the boat for that long, which makes jumping the only option if you were stuck on it. We have to remember that everything that goes over the dam gets kept there for hours or days. At some point a tree trunk come come down and that would cause it to flip the boat when both mashed against the dam.
Its highly unlikely that you make the jump at 6:06. Your best bet is to hold on the railing until a helicopter arrives. A few years ago we had a rescue at a local hydro power station which was under construction so the low head damn was only approx 10 meters wide und 1,5 meter high. 4 students passed it with a rubber dinghy and got trapped in the boil. they were incredibly lucky that the boat didnt flip over but it was possible any moment. We secured the boat from the weirs wall with poles and ropes, dropping them life vests. Because of heavy rain in the area for several days the currents were extremely strong and we couldnt reach the boat with our 200 hp rescue boat, the downstream was too massive. Roping down from the weirs walls was considered to dangerous so we had to call at another dam which was approx 2 km upstream to reduce the waterflow and radioed for a rescue helicopter. We rescued all 4, one by one with the helicopters winch. All 4 survived with nothing but hypothermia and the scare of their life. Still, what an incredibly stupid idea crossing a low head dam on a flooded river with nothing but a 20 dollar inflatable boat....
Had the same thing happen here in Iowa....except the owner and his grandkids were on board. They had to come rescue them, and the video was featured on "Rescue 911" back in the early 90's.
It is a shame that someone lost their boat. Many laugh it is only worth $50 or so, but not everyone has $20,000 for a boat. Now a question for all you experienced boaters. If someone had been on the boat, and it been under power, could they have run straight off and managed to jump past the recirculating area of the dam? It looks like since it was sideways, it is only in water that is moving upstream. If it had been going off straight, would it have been able to move past that and gotten into water running downstream again?
Ah, no reason for that, zooming in too much is just a common thing at youtube. But then again you win at keeping the cam steady :-), the other common problem.
I'm really surprised it didn't roll over, but I guess that's because of it being a pontoon with open deck design. A johnboat or any other boat with gunwales would have filled up like a bathtub, then rolled over.
The boat survived fine. The crap he built on it fell apart. Throw a line to it and use a pickup to haul it out of there. Put on a new rail and rebuild the top correctly.
A baseball to the crotch is a little different than thousands of dollars of boat -- your investment for summer memories for your family, etc -- getting destroyed. If this is funny, you must roll on the floor gasping from laughter when you watch entire villages destroyed in a tsunami.
That boat was stuck in circulating water rather than water being translated. As I viewed all this I could not help thinking that this situation is so related to the wing of a plane when landing with flaps and stalls where the streamlnes on the upper surface of the wing will circulate above the trailing edge. This circulation rather than translation of fluid occurs in many situations and I am surprised that some people who design floodwater channels unintensially create a lot of zones with circulation rather than translation of water.
Kinda anticlimactic if you ask me. Thanks for posting, I enjoyed it. I was just hoping for some closure. As it is in my mind right now, the boat is just stuck there forever. What finally happened?
you have a bag of the engine that is my friend's boat so you can grab my hat not migraines but the engine for it because my grandma's phone is out. But the one that can't when I was at them so it's mine and I hope I get a new phone so I can go fishing so thank you for making this video
