It’s truly amazing, the trouble you can get into on the water. You don’t need to have even a vague idea of what to do. Anyone, literally, can obtain a boat and take it out for a dose of oblivion: no license, no training, required. “Gee, lookit the size o’ them there breakers! Let’s steer right into ’em!” And there’s always the temptation to jump off a bridge and try to land on the boat just passing under it. Somehow I’ve always been able to resist it. But not everybody does.
OMG! I’ve spent a few hours in rowboats and even less time in a small boat with an outboard motor, so I know nothing about boats. From the video, one thing stands out; water can be in motion, and the boat’s movement can be measured relative to the water, relative to the wind, relative to a fixed point onshore and relative to other boats. That’s a lot to take into account.
When you drive a car, under “normal” conditions, the movement is relative to the road. Other cars are playing by the same rules and things tend to work fairly well. Add two inches of fresh snow, and things get a lot more dicey. On water, or in the air, there’s never the absolute friction of an automobile on a dry road. Only a fool would try to fly an airplane without instruction. I would say that, with the possible exception of a rowboat on a secluded lake, the same holds true for boats.
We had a little rowboat, at first with an outboard motor (but we didn’t keep that)–and a number of close shaves involving people who would have been confined to the Gobi Desert, as far from the water as possible. You wouldn’t believe what some of them get up to.
When someone uses an airplane for purely recreational purposes, such as taking some friends on a sightseeing trip, there is a real possibility that even an otherwise skilled and conscientious pilot can get caught up in the fun of the moment and forget that safety is the highest priority. It happens all too often.
Boats, likewise, require skill to operate safely and if someone has no idea of safe operation, they can become a real menace. Sadly, recreational boating frequently happens in fairly crowded settings, so an unskilled boater can easily harm others.
Mine was a big water skiing family. My brother-in-law build speedboats from scratch. I remember one time a guy backing his boat into the water and his whole car ended up being submerged in the process.
You see that at the boat launch ramps all the time.