Oh, Derek.... you may not have attended a fireworks display in a harbor in the past. I used to do this- including Baltimore Harbor (which has great fireworks, Fort McHenry and all that) No more. The whole thing is ridiculous: motoring in and trying to anchor, then watching the area fill up with more and more boaters who proceed to anchor over each others anchor rodes whilst getting totally obliterated drunk, then only twenty to thirty minutes of fireworks, accompanied by deafening hornblowing, and then the finale: hundreds of drunken boaters trying to fire up their boats, weigh anchor and all leave at once- in the dark. Usually without benefit of a full moon. It's amazing MORE people don't get killed.
I have had (I would not do this now!) eight people on my 36 Egg Harbor, years ago, for the Baltimore fireworks display. I am grateful nothing happened to any of them. I'll never do anything like that again.
I completely agree that the folks on the boat bear the sole responsibility for the disaster on the Kandi Won. I suppose, though, that faced with the choice of having to admit that you participated in the circumstances where your child died, on the one hand, and finding someone else to blame on the other, many of us would opt for the latter. And I agree that there is no way that a small boat like that ought to be carrying any number of passengers like it was that night.
