20 February 2011

Party Boat disaster on Lake Burley Griffin!

| johnboy
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SRS Water Operations rescued 24 guests from a hen’s night and three crew, from a vessel on Lake Burley Griffin last night (Saturday 19 February).

Around 8.00pm a private boat collided with a submerged log at East Basin on Lake Burley Griffin.

The vessel started taking on water in the engine bay and attempted to return to Commonwealth Place jetty. The engine cut out about 300 metres short of the jetty and the crew anchored the vessel. The vessel’s pontoons were water tight and the vessel was not in danger of sinking.

Water Police transferred all of the guests to the Commonwealth Place jetty in good spirits and good health.

The crew remained on the vessel which was towed back to its berth by Water Police.

“Recent heavy rains have brought branches and logs into Lake Burley Griffin. Even although work has been carried out to clean up the lake, this incident serves as a reminder to be vigilant of submerged objects when boating on the lake,” said Senior Constable Bryce Brown.

[Courtesy ACT Policing]

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I suspect the water police are somewhat bored and very happy to have something exciting to do like rescue a party boat loaded with drunken Hens.

Sounds like they’ve found a way to make the party boat rather more exciting! I wonder if there’ll be a ‘disaster’ every weekend now…

What I find interesting is that the water police were able to respond so quickly at 8pm on a Saturday night. Are there really water police on-call 24/7 for this sort of happening, or was it simply police from Civic who took a drive to Yarralumla and opened the station up when the alarm was raised?

Several pairs of cock socks were seen floating further down stream.

Yep, Disaster is … somewhat overstating it. Although I suppose “party boat mildly inconvenienced” doesn’t get the clickthrough….

An accident where nobody was killed and apparently nobody was injured either shouldn’t be deemed as a ‘disaster’. At best it was a ‘mishap’.

..then the water police proceeded to rip off their velco’d on trousers and dance up a storm for the hen’s night win win.

grunge_hippy4:05 pm 20 Feb 11

not the pirate boat?! tragedy!

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