Tahoe Queen runs into sand bar — again
By Anjeanette Damon, Reno Gazette-Journal
The Tahoe Queen ran aground shortly after midnight Thursday during a New Year’s Eve cruise, stranding revelers in the icy cold weather for about two hours, the U.S. Coast Guard reported.
About 200 people made it safely off the boat after a tug pulled the stranded ship off the sand bar in Zephyr Cove, Ensign Jake Urrutia said.
“By the time we got the report, the 200 passengers were off the vessel,” Urrutia said. “The vessel had been pulled out by the tug and moored out. We don’t know exactly what happened yet.”
No injuries were reported on the popular paddle-wheel boat. But the weather was extremely cold, with a low of about 8 degrees.
Driving by Tahoe Commons on Thursday afternoon I saw more people in the lake than walking on the sidewalks. What part of not knowing where the sand bars are is not on the pilot’s check list? Twice?
They just updated their report, looks like it was high winds, not the sand bar.
http://www.ktvn.com/story/27743984/correction-tahoe-queen-stalled-due-to-winds-not-run-aground
The last time I checked, allowing your boat (ship?) to be blown aground is neither the fault of the winds nor the shallow bottom.
Mariners spend many years preparing and studying for their license. Running aground is not acceptable; I don’t know if it’s NTSB or some other alphabet agency that investigate these things, but overlooking conditions is almost never an excuse for what might otherwise be called incompetence.
If it were easy, even I could do it.
Same captain & crew? Did they charge the hapless flatlanders stuck on board for drinks and snacks again?
Copper large vessels go aground all of the time due to no fault of the crew a good many because of high winds and high winds. It is very difficult to maneuver a ship through a small channel at night. And with the variables the Queen has even more so. This vessel only uses its paddle to power and a rudder to steer, other vessels have twin props which have the ability to help turn. When the winds pickup the superstructure will act like a huge sail and if you are in a narrow channel there is nothing you can do to stop it. That is way many large vessels use tugs when they are going into port. I doubt that even if this vessel was equipped with bow thrusters and propellers, that it would help in very high winds.
The entity that has legal force to impose fines in case of accidents is the Coast Guard if they find negligence. I do believe that the captain in last summers groundinghasn’t worked for Zephyr in months
Captains are supposed to NOT run ships aground, no matter the various conditions! That’s why tourists are trusting supposedly trained captains to take them out on the Lake.
Aramark is showing very poor management with this repeated pattern. Maybe that’s why they lost another GM, (what have they been averaging about 1/year the last few years?) within the last month.
Channel 2 News needs to make a correction to a story we first brought you early Thursday morning in regards to an incident involving the Lake Tahoe Queen, one of two tour boats that cruises Lake Tahoe.
We originally reported that the Queen had run aground in Zephyr Cove, Nevada early Thursday morning after taking passengers on a New Years Eve cruise. That information that was reported came from United States Coast Guard personnel and was corroborated with a passenger on board.
The Tahoe Queen typically runs from Ski Run Boulevard in South Lake Tahoe to Emerald Bay and back. When the coast guard insisted that the boat had gotten stuck in Zephyr Cove it made us question the information.
After speaking with several other law enforcement agencies as well as Aramark, the company that operates Lake Tahoe Cruises, we learned that the boat was on it’s way back from the New Year’s Eve cruise when high winds picked up and made the waters difficult to travel. Aramark tells Channel 2 that it is company policy for the boat to stop operation and request a tug boat to assist them in making it back to shore when these high winds persist. Unfortunately, it took that tug boat longer than anticipated to reach the boat causing passengers to feel stranded and become upset with the situation.
Aramark says they are still investigating what took the tug so long to get there as well any other issues that arose during the incident.
We sincerely apologize for the error in the original report.