LAKE WYLIE, S.C. — With boating season in full swing, officers are focusing on keeping fun safe, especially during summer holidays.
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Places like Lake Wiley and Norman see a lot of smaller emergencies, with a few major ones mixed in. Channel 9′s Glenn Counts headed to the water to meet with members of the U.S. Coast Guard and Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Officers to see how they keep boaters safe.
Ethan Campano with the U.S. Coast Guard told Counts that they go around making sure everyone is safe and that their goal is never to ruin someone’s day out on the lake.
“We’re out here ensuring that everyone is safe, even if we do see something out here to mess everybody’s day up,” Campano said.
Keeping all boaters safe becomes more of a handful on holidays. Halen Bruce, a boater, told Counts there were only a few choppy spots on the water.
“It wasn’t too bad; there were a couple of spots where it was a little choppy with the bigger boats going by,” Bruce said.
ABC Officers have three boats out on the water to keep an eye out for boaters who may have had too much to drink. They told Counts that an issue that more officers have been running into is boaters bringing hard liquor onto the water.
“Anything that you can bring to the grocery store, you can have on your boat; if you have to come to the ABC store to get it, then you’ll probably see us,” ABC Officer Bruce Mullis said.
Campano told Counts that many people don’t know that driving a boat while impaired is the same as getting behind the wheel of your car drunk. That’s why officers recommend all boatowners take a safety course because too many people go out on the water without training.
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Boaters like Jake Gilmore, who has more than two decades of boating experience, prove that making safety a priority pays off.
“There’s no checklist, but we’ve been doing this for 25 years, and safety is number one,” Gilmore said. “Kids always wear their life jackets in the boat, and make sure all your gear is set and ready to go.”
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