‘Circle of death’ captured on video as boat spins out of control in Tennessee lake
A Tennessee man saw his day on the lake go from bad to worse this week, when he was thrown from the craft without his life jacket and watched it speed away with no one at the controls.
The boat did not go in a straight line, however.
Video recorded by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency shows the boat settled into a pattern referred to as “the circle of death,” going round and round as the displaced boater tread water.
It happened Memorial Day on Norris Lake in east Tennessee. The boater says he flew out when the boat hit rough water, the division said in a release. The 34,000-acre lake is about 20 miles north of Knoxville.
“The man says he was traveling 33 mph when the incident occurred ... his boat continued in what’s known as ‘the circle of death’,” the agency said in a Facebook post.
“He was able to swim away from the boat and be rescued by some nearby fishermen who heard him calling for help,” the post said.
The boat had been going in circles for an hour and a half when three wildlife officers figured out how to stop it. They threw ropes into its path, which eventually “became entangled in the propeller and stalled the engine,” the division said.
“It was a four stroke engine and the tank was about 3/4 full. It would have continued for a long time,” the division said.
Video of the boat circling was posted with a warning that mariners need to have a kill switch with them to prevent boats from continuing on without an operator. Kill switches are a device that stops “the engine in the event of the helmsperson being thrown out of their seat,” according to Motorboat.com.
“Without a life jacket and a kill switch on, he’s very fortunate to make it out unharmed,” Officer Jason Lankford said in a release. “Ninety percent of the time, this kind of incident does not have a happy ending.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 3:46 PM with the headline "‘Circle of death’ captured on video as boat spins out of control in Tennessee lake."