Re: Non-boaters, do we blame them??? Just left a girl at the dock!
Yup, that lovely thread with the photos of your young guests "chugging" beers via a funnel - which has absolutely no purpose, other than to get someone very drunk, very quickly. Well, that and being immature show-offs.
Talk to marine LEO somtime about rafting parties with drinking involved. They spend inordinate amounts of time having to deal with them in general and the same goes for dealing with the aftermath of them. That's were lots BUIs occur and that's where lots of incidents occur.
BTW, drinking 3 "lemonades" before swimming and doing all the other stuff that you mentioned, suggests that the period of consumption is pretty short. Those three drinks would put you pretty close to being legally drunk in any state in the country, depending on just how fast you drank them, your body weight, etc. Even short of being legally drunk, you would be impaired in a number of critical ways. That's for the "regular lemonades." If you were drinking Mikes Hard Lemonade (8%), you would be quite a bit over the legal limit in all 50 states.
As for needing to relax, perhaps you didn't read my post carefully. Two weeks ago, I listened to a mother and father describe hauling their dead daughter out of a canal, after she insisted on going swimming while drunk. The father jumped in the water to find her under the surface, with an arm that he had broken in two places, three days prior to that. The mother described the mental image that as she put it, "she will carry for the rest of her life." That image was of her daughter's face, lips, etc., being "as blue as could be."
As it turned out, she wasn't "completely dead" at the time. She survived on a heart/lung machine in the hospital for about four hours, until her organs began to shut down. So, on top of thinking she was dead and seeing what appeared to be her lifeless body at the dock, they had to agonize for hours and then make the decision to "pull the plug." How long do you think that reality will haunt them? How about, "forever?"
This is a consequence that you need to hear. Three drinks before swimming is enough to result in a tragic situation. Encouraging young girls to put alcohol down their throats via a funnel, puts you right smack in the middle of tragedy, should one of those girls get hurt or killed.
I don't usually get in people's faces around here, but you brought this on yourself. There is a really good group of folks on the iboats forums and the vast majoity practice and encourage safe boating. I'd like to see things stay that way.
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asked me if I wanted to join her.
