Hit and Run

It’s been a bit of a WTF morning today.

Today we had a glorious 9k race piece around Lake Mercer in the doubles.  Good stuff.  Hauling butt up and down the lake.
The lead boat today was Kate Bertko and Sarah Trowbridge, leading the charge in a Fluidesign double.  As we were making our way down the buoyed part of the 2k race course, a fishing boat decided to cross the course in front of them, and caused a collision.  The collision took the bow of the boat clean off, and sank them.  Fortunately, both Kate and Sarah are totally fine and avoided injury.
From afar I couldn’t really tell what was going on as we raced past, but at one point saw a body jump out of the boat.  I had no idea the extent of the situation until after practice, when I saw that part of the boat was missing, and that the girls had taken a lengthy swim in the lake after the offending fisherman drove off and LEFT THEM THERE without offering them any assistance or hailing a safety launch.  Instead, he promptly drove back to the boat landing intent, I’m sure, on calling it a day and heading home.
Fortunately, Coach Volpenhein was on hand to help the girls with their boat and give them a ride back to shore as well as to “discuss” the situation with the fisherman.  And one of the men’s lightweight crews was able to snag the registration number off the guy’s boat.  Then we found out that this nice man went ahead and decided to call the cops to report “being hit”.

SERIOUSLY DUDE!?  WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?

Park ranger is here now.  Out for blood.

Long Live the Dream,

–MK