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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

As boating season nears, marine deputies hit the water to tell boaters about safety rules

Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy James Ebel spends most of his time talking to boaters about safety. But every so often Ebel, a full-time marine deputy, sees something a bit more colorful.

On Newman Lake, for instance, there’s a man who deputies have cited a few times for water skiing without a spotter. “He’s got a mannequin sitting next to him” with an orange flag taped to the hand, Ebel said. “If we see him again, he’s going to go to jail.”

The Sheriff’s Office has a dozen officers trained to patrol the county’s waters and make sure boaters are safe. On a Thursday patrol, Ebel and his supervisor, Sgt. Jim Gladden, took to the waters of Liberty Lake, where a handful of people were out fishing.

Just after 11 a.m., they stopped to check on a couple whose motor had stopped working. The pair were rowing back to the boat launch with an oar and said they didn’t need help. Ebel had already inspected them to make sure they had life jackets, so he left after promising to circle back if it looked like they were in trouble.

The Sheriff’s Office has five boats it uses to patrol lakes and rivers in the county. Boating season starts June 1, and law enforcement agencies across the country take part in National Safe Boating Week the week before that to promote awareness of safety rules.

Ebel said larger lakes often get busy on nice days, when people bring out boats they haven’t used in months.

Most of the citations Ebel writes are for people who don’t have required life jackets or boater education cards. State law requires a life jacket for each person on board, and county law requires children under 12 to be wearing life jackets on all boats.

The county also has a blanket speed restriction of 50 mph during the day and 15 mph at night. Some boaters get confused about different rules between Idaho and Washington, so Ebel recommends that people go online to read the rules for the area where they’re going.

“Talking to as many people as possible is the biggest thing, because some folks just don’t know,” Ebel said.

Days on the water tend to be more relaxed than patrolling the streets, Ebel said.

“People like to see us out there, and they interact with us,” he said. Usually, they’re less confrontational, though sometimes the deputies run into problems from people on personal watercraft who like to weave between buoys illegally.

When they see the Sheriff’s Office boat coming, “they usually take the Jet Ski real fast and run in to the house,” Gladden said.

The last weekend in June, the deputies will participate in Operation Dry Water, a national campaign against boating under the influence. Washington law allows boat operators to have an open container of alcohol on the boat, but they can’t be under the influence.

Ebel said alcohol tends to hit people about twice as hard on the water, thanks to the motion of the boat. He’s been specially trained to administer a drunken boating test, which is taken sitting down since many of the walking exercises used on motorists are impractical on moving water.

The American Boating Association reported 626 recreational boating fatalities in the U.S. last year. About three-quarters of those deaths were caused by drowning, almost entirely among people who were not wearing life jackets. Alcohol use was a contributing factor in 91 of those deaths.

“We don’t want to be the county that has those fatalities,” Gladden said.