Boats pushing 300 mph deemed a safety risk

By: AARON CLAVERIE - Staff Writer
City mulling muffling drag boat roar | Wednesday, November 28, 2007 10:03 PM PST ∞

LAKE ELSINORE -- Owners of high-speed boats and plume-throwing drag boats, the marine equivalent of top fuel dragsters, could face stricter regulations when using Lake Elsinore's "high-speed zone."

The city's Public Safety Advisory Commission is expected to consider at a future meeting adding language to the city code that would regulate high-speed boats, including drag boats, which throw up huge plumes of water while hitting top speeds of 260 mph during quarter-mile races, city officials said this week.

The commission's consideration comes after the City Council this week passed an ordinance requiring hydroplane boat owners to apply for "special event permits" before operating on the lake.

The city revised the regulations related to hydroplane boats -- generally fork-nosed vessels, sometimes jet-powered, that skim on the water at speeds of 200-plus mph -- after a San Diego-based hydroplane racing team asked to make a test run inside the lake's "high-speed zone," a mile-and-quarter swath in the center of the lake that is exempt from the lake's 35 mph speed limit.

While the racing company has since decided to take its testing program to Lake Washington, a much bigger Sacramento-area lake, Lake Elsinore's new ordinance requires hydroplane boat owners, but not non-hydroplane drag boats and other high-speed boats, to apply for a permit before operating on the lake.

The ordinance gives the city's staff and the Riverside County Sheriff's Department time to assess the public safety risks and place additional safety conditions on hydroplane boat owners to protect the general boating public, said Pat Kilroy, city director of lake and aquatic resources.

Lake Elsinore resident Pete Dawson, the former owner of a local boat shop, said the city's new ordinance doesn't go far enough.

Dawson, a member of the local search and rescue team, said Wednesday that the city should have regulations in place to cover any vessel that exceeds a certain speed limit in the high-speed zone, especially drag boats, which are raced during regattas in San Diego's Mission Bay and lakes near Bakersfield and Chowchilla.

He's not sure what the ideal speed limit would be -- he's suggesting 150 mph -- but he said it shouldn't be so low that the allure of the high-speed zone is impacted.

"We should protect our high-speed zone, which has a perfect safety record, while attracting people and attracting businesses that want to use the zone for testing," Dawson said.

Responding to Dawson's concern, Kilroy said Wednesday that the safety commission considered a number of issues, including limits on other types of boats and restricting access to the high-speed zone, before coming to a consensus on the hydroplane boat ordinance.

Rolf Sammons, president of the Southern California-based National Jet Boat Association, said it makes sense for Lake Elsinore to consider new regulations since the operation of high-speed racing boats requires heightened safety protocols.

Lake Ming, a lake near Bakersfield that the association uses for most of its events, has regulations in place that limit testing of high-speed boats to Thursdays during a two-hour block, Sammons said. No other vessels are allowed on Lake Ming during that testing time and companies pay a fee to use the time.

Talking about the prospect of staging a race at Lake Elsinore, Sammons said the association likely would be interested in applying for a permit if required because the area is a hotbed for racing.

The association staged an event in the Lake Elsinore inlet channel in 1999, Sammons said.

-- Contact Aaron Claverie at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2624, or e-mail aclaverie@californian.com.