Pontoon

Piney Run Park will again offer pontoon rides this summer. Pontoon programs are available for all age groups.Registration for all rides is required and payment is due within one week of registering. Call 795-3274 for details and to register.The park's cancellation policy is to notify participants as soon as possible if a program is canceled. If sudden inclement weather appears, participants will be notified at the park.If a program is canceled due to the weather or lack of people and the cost is more than $3 per person, registrants may get either a refund or a credit toward another program.

Back this hitch up into the water Untie all the cables and rope Step onto the astro turf Get yourself a coozie Let's go…. Long before the pop-country group Little Big Town introduced its No. 1 hit, "Pontoon," last summer, pontooning had become been a part of the boating community in the United States. Its roots go back more than 60 years to a Minnesota farmer named Ambrose Weeres who came up with the crazy idea of putting a wooden platform on two columns of welded steel barrels and spending his lazy summer afternoons fishing on a nearby lake.

Piney Run Park will offer a number of pontoon rides on the lake during the summer. Pontoon programs are available for all age groups.Registration for all rides is required, and payment is due within one week of registering. Call 410-795-3274 for details, including the park's cancellation policies.Child rates apply to those under 12; Senior rates apply for those 62 and older. Pontoon programs for children and an adult are:Mickey Mouse Pontoon: Bring a favorite Mickey Mouse or wear a Mickey outfit, at 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. June 18 and 25; July 9, 16 and 30; and Aug. 6 and 20. Fees are $2 per person.

The Coast Guard's final report on the 2004 Baltimore Harbor water taxi accident that left five dead and one child with brain damage urges pontoon boat inspections and new stability standards based on heavier passengers. The 63-page report and recommendations, which a Baltimore Coast Guard official acknowledged took "longer than we would like" to complete, says the Lady D capsized March 6, 2004, with a full load of 23 passengers and two crew because of a combination of bad weather, overloading, movement and direction of the 36-foot boat.

Aboard Piney Run Lake's pontoon, children swept the clouds away, sang of sunny days and took the waterway to Sesame Street.Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie dolls all came along for the ride Wednesday. Oscar and any other grouches stayed home.Karen Jenne, park assistant and pontoon captain for the day, passed out life jackets to the little cruisers. Many clutched a mother's hand and looked a little nervous as they embarked on their maiden voyages."Look, we are making waves," said Jeffrey Duerr, 5 1/2 , as the pontoon pulled away from the dock.

Federal investigators are still puzzling over what caused a water taxi to capsize in Baltimore's harbor, killing as many as five people. And so is Jeffrey L. Harper, manager of the company that built the boat. Harper, who runs the tiny Susquehanna Santee Boatworks in rural Lancaster County, Pa., said he is "devastated" about the deaths. He said he believes his firm's pontoon boats are safe and stable when used on the calm, protected waters for which they're designed, but he adds that even the best-made boat can be dangerous if taken out under the wrong conditions.

In the wake of the fatal capsizing of a Seaport Taxi in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the Coast Guard is reviewing the testing process it uses to certify the safety of pontoon boats. "The Coast Guard, as a whole, in light of this tragedy, is re-evaluating the whole process we use for determining pontoon boat stability," said Lt. Joe DuFresne, chief of small passenger vessel inspections for the Coast Guard's Baltimore area office. The Lady D, which flipped during a sudden blast of wind off Fort McHenry during a storm March 6, killing five people, never had a stability test, according to Coast Guard records.

Federal investigators looking into Saturday's fatal capsizing of a water taxi on Baltimore's Inner Harbor are examining the design of the two-hulled Lady D and may study the safety record of similar pontoon boats nationally. Some other water taxi services - including those in Delaware, Chicago, Boston Harbor, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Vancouver, Canada - use larger, conventional-hulled boats, which some captains consider more stable in high winds and choppy waters than smaller boats with raised platforms atop pairs of torpedo-shaped floats.

Lt. Joe DuFresne, Less than two months after a fatal water shuttle accident in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the U.S. Coast Guard has ordered the owner of Seaport Taxis to cut maximum passenger loads by about 25 percent to make the boats safer. In addition, the Guard has directed the Living Classrooms Foundation to modify two of its pontoon boats by moving the floats farther apart to improve stability, said Lt. Joe DuFresne, chief of small passenger boat inspections for the Baltimore regional office.

Five years after the water taxi Lady D flipped over in Baltimore Harbor, killing five passengers, two federal agencies remain divided over the cause of the tragedy and the lessons to be learned from it. The National Transportation Safety Board, after its investigation, made recommendations to the Coast Guard on steps to be taken to prevent future small-craft accidents. But the Coast Guard has staked out a contrary position on several points as it struggles to rewrite its safety rules in the aftermath of a calamity that shook the maritime agency to its core.

Five years after the water taxi Lady D flipped over in Baltimore Harbor, killing five passengers, two federal agencies remain divided over the cause of the tragedy and the lessons to be learned from it. The National Transportation Safety Board, after its investigation, made recommendations to the Coast Guard on steps to be taken to prevent future small-craft accidents. But the Coast Guard has staked out a contrary position on several points as it struggles to rewrite its safety rules in the aftermath of a calamity that shook the maritime agency to its core.

HUALAPAI, ARIZ. Ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls and bored gamblers: Let me remind you of a new opportunity to be among the first (thousand or so) to slide on booties and tread upon the Hualapai Nation's wacky new tourist attraction, the glass-floored Skywalk, which juts out over a western edge of the Grand Canyon, about 120 miles east of Las Vegas. Of course, if you don't find the Wile E. Coyote perspective or the $74.95 price tag tempting, you may be inclined to turn away. But walk with me anyway, for a few miles, in Hualapai booties.

More than two years after five people died when an overloaded water taxi sank in Baltimore's harbor, the U.S. Coast Guard urged operators of small passenger vessels yesterday to adjust for the greater heftiness of the average American. The Coast Guard called on the owners of all pontoon boats and other passenger boats under 65 feet to assume that the average passenger weighs 185 pounds and to recalculate their vessels' capacities accordingly. For years, marine safety rules have been based on assumed average weights of 140 to 160 pounds depending on the circumstances.

Two insurance firms representing the company whose water taxi overturned in Baltimore's Inner Harbor in 2004, killing five people, said they plan to sue the U.S. Coast Guard today, alleging that the maritime service certified the vessel for too many passengers. The companies, which paid confidential settlements to the victims on board the Lady D after it capsized in a sudden storm between Fort McHenry and Fells Point, said the vessel was not properly tested for stability by the Coast Guard before it was put to use. And, the lawsuit is expected to say, it never should have been permitted to carry 25 people.

The lines of people never stopped. They were everywhere -- outside the Superdome, inside the Superdome. There were lines of people heading to dry land, lines of people heading to the freeways. There was even a line on one man's roof -- about 20 residents, awaiting rescue. Having the only two-story house on the block, his roof served as a perch of last resort for his family and more than a dozen neighbors. That included a woman in a wheelchair they had hoisted up from a second-floor window.

FEDERAL INVESTIGATORS have not yet determined what caused a Seaport Taxi to capsize in March during a sudden storm. Five people died in that accident and four others were seriously injured. But a recent report suggests that at least one potential factor can be easily corrected. The Lady D was overweight, the report from the National Transportation Safety Board points out, because while it was certified to carry 25 people, the boat's 25 passengers weighed a collective 4,200 pounds - or 700 pounds more than the U.S. Coast Guard deems safe.

FEDERAL INVESTIGATORS have not yet determined what caused a Seaport Taxi to capsize in March during a sudden storm. Five people died in that accident and four others were seriously injured. But a recent report suggests that at least one potential factor can be easily corrected. The Lady D was overweight, the report from the National Transportation Safety Board points out, because while it was certified to carry 25 people, the boat's 25 passengers weighed a collective 4,200 pounds - or 700 pounds more than the U.S. Coast Guard deems safe.

Three survivors of the fatal Seaport Taxi tragedy in March filed a $17 million lawsuit yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court, alleging that the owner and operator of the Lady D were "negligent and careless" by ordering the vessel into the choppy waters of the city harbor during an impending storm. In their suit, Thomas Pierce, 60, of New Jersey, who lost his wife and daughter in the accident, and Eric Jahnsen, 25, and Sarah Kernagis, 23, of North Carolina, said that the boat owner, the nonprofit Living Classrooms Foundation, and the operator, Baltimore Harbor Shuttle, could have prevented the March 6 accident.

Lt. Joe DuFresne, Less than two months after a fatal water shuttle accident in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the U.S. Coast Guard has ordered the owner of Seaport Taxis to cut maximum passenger loads by about 25 percent to make the boats safer. In addition, the Guard has directed the Living Classrooms Foundation to modify two of its pontoon boats by moving the floats farther apart to improve stability, said Lt. Joe DuFresne, chief of small passenger boat inspections for the Baltimore regional office.