Warning: this is a long winded post that I regret already. I'll probably just get told to be more compliant and calm down but I'm posting anyway, I tried to make it shorter and more interesting but it was hard, read at your own risk.
So I'm delighted that the "Covid Cones"as I call them were not on Wahweap ramp all last weekend. They were a series of cones before and to the right of the shack at the top of the Wahweap Ramp directing all traffic to stop at said shack. You had to wait behind everyone towing a boat to get the 20 questions before you could get down the ramp to the lower marina parking. When you got to the booth without a boat in tow they would just wave you on without any question every time. So just what was the point of the cones then anyway? They were just annoying when it was 105 out and my ice was melting and my groceries were warming up. I sure hope the cones are gone forever.
Inspections however did not go so well for me. I hadn't got my local boater sticker yet this season so upon pulling my boat Sunday I needed an inspection. The inspector dug around in the folds of the bellows of my outdrive and found 3 or 4 (literally) old shells from two years ago. (My bad, I get that) The inspector got all excited and his accent was so thick I could hardly understand a word he said. His shirt said Vendor on it and he seemed new to this. I explained that the boat had been off the lake for two years, that I'd recently bought it from a former Aramark Captain who'd had it in a slip and that I thought I'd gotten them all. I was being very polite hoping I could go on my way soon.
The guy hummed and hawed for a long time so I suggested to him to look at the hull and his logs from Friday, that it had been in the water just two days. I picked up a muscle and showed him it was empty. I told him I stored it at the Lake Powell Yacht Club in town and that I wasn't taking it anywhere else all summer. But then he told me I needed a "professional decontamination of my boat and that he needed to fill out a lot of paperwork" Then he asks how do you spell YOT? Really?
I respectfully declined to comply and told him I'd changed my mind about leaving and that I was relaunching my boat. I did and he didn't protest. Of course first thing in the AM I pulled my boat before the booth was manned and pulled it into town. Did I commit a crime in Arizona? No, So what is with all the heavy handed enforcement?
I won't be the first guy on WW to complain about the inspections and it is probably a beaten dead horse of a topic. However, in my opinion, Utah might get a lot farther in their legitimate quest to keep muscles out of their lakes, an effort I agree with, if they toned it down a bit.
Persuading folks who boat to be responsible is the only way that's going to happen. Utah's part time program presence of enforcement at Lake Powell is not going to get it done. There is nothing preventing any random person from relaunching a boat in any other lake before it's drained and dry if they pull it after hours or on a day the booths aren't manned if they don't know any better; Enforcement can't be everywhere all the time. In my opinion they won't win over a lot of hearts and minds with the heavy handed unreasonable approach I got. The show of rigid enforcement and compliance is what I'm wondering about, how does that fit in with persuasion? Maybe somebody should rethink their approach.
