Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 12, 1993 TAG: 9307120039
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was Saturday and Sunday at Smith Mountain Lake, where hot summer weekends usually mean long hours for the game wardens who police boat traffic.
Activity on the lake has dropped dramatically in recent days, and Lt. Karl Martin of the state Game and Inland Fisheries Department thinks he knows why:
In some parts of the lake, a week of sizzling temperatures has warmed the surface water to as much as 90 degrees.
"It's not very refreshing when you jump in," Martin said.
The water is cooler deeper down, but that apparently was of little comfort to water skiers and other boaters.
"There were a lot of people visiting the lake," Martin said. "But during the middle of the day, boat traffic was much less than it normally would be."
That's not to say that Martin and his overworked staff had nothing to do, though.
Sunday afternoon, a severe thunderstorm capsized a small sailboat near Bernard's Landing. The operator was wearing a life jacket, but might still have drowned in high winds and 2-foot waves had he not been picked up quickly by a passing boater, Martin said.
And on Saturday, the driver of a 14-foot aluminum boat was charged with reckless operation when the craft plowed into a dock in the Witcher Creek section of the lake.
The operator, who was thrown from the boat before it crashed, was not injured, Martin said. Damage to the boat and the dock was minor.
With those and other mishaps - plus the several hours it took a warden to arrest and process one person on charges of operating his boat while intoxicated - Martin's staff was still feeling the heat.
Most weekends, he said, "we're just not able to keep up."
by CNB