Higher speeds limits would be awful, and not only for paddlers.
Fishermen also hate the unpredictable water behavior caused by powerboats speeding, especially those who circle around and around.
It’s not the wakes per se. Ocean paddlers deal with waves routinely. It is the sudden and unnatural disruption and the threat of being hit by a fast-moving boat that are awful. Barges and huge commercial ships out in shipping lanes throw much bigger wakes, but those ships are farther away and the waves are much more predictable. I used to wait and park myself in a spot waiting minutes—yes, minutes—for some (hopefully) fun waves to roll in. That is nothing like having speeding powerboats zoom by.
While often the powerboat wakes cause a relatively minor disturbance to the water, the friggin’ WAKEBOATS are the absolute worst of all.
One of the places I go, which is much smaller than Lake Winnepesaukee, provided sort of a controlled comparison. First was Before Wakeboat Invasion. The powerboats were not enough in number, speed, or azzhole factor to be obnoxious, most of the time.
Then two things developed. First was the overall tsunami of scofflaw tourons who were traveling from every state during the supposed COVID shutdown. Crowding went from not bad to horrible in just one season. It continued in 2021 and will never go away, because once a place has become known to the national mobs, crowding remains.
Second, and every bit as awful, was the coming of a commercial entity that took customers out on an elephant-on-postage-stamp wakeboat with the loudest “music” blasting all over the reservoir. Literally all over. That boat could be at the far long end and we could hear it a few miles at the other end.
The guy got in trouble for the loudness and his other “campground” business at a different place, so the volume was turned down later. He began avoiding going too closely to other boats, which he had earlier done as normal practice.
But the damage was done. The hordes of second-homers from out of state got into me-too-keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mode and some of them bought their own GD wakeboats. In 2021 I saw maybe one or two wakeboats out on weekdays when I paddled. In 2022 that jumped to sometimes 6 to 8 of them.
I repeat and stress this point: Even ONE wakeboat going not that fast has negative effects on the entire reservoir, no matter how far away. The venue is far, far too small to accommodate them without harming most others’ experiences on or near the water.
Neither higher speed limits nor wakeboats fits anywhere but far from shore on massive bodies of water. And I have my doubts about even that.
And why, during a time when practical automobiles are being forced to have unrealistically high mpg—or to switch to EV as if there is unlimited electrical supply—are gas-guzzling, environment-trashing TOYS given any leeway???