A high-school fishing tournament in California took a terrifying turn just after blast-off on Saturday, when two boats collided near the San Joaquin Delta. Six people were injured during the crash, and four of them had to be hospitalized. Three have since been released. The one person still in the hospital was one of the adult boat operators involved in the crash, according to one of the tournament organizers.
“Just a really tragic incident. We’re still just trying to make sure everybody is okay,” says Barry Sterud, the youth director for the California Bass Federation, which helped put on the competition. “Everybody’s out of the hospital, except for the one boater, and he’s doing okay.”
Sterud was unable to share additional details about the crash, as he and the other organizers are still waiting on an investigation report from the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office. The CCCSO did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the status of its investigation.
The Sheriff’s Office first got a call about the collision around 6:55 a.m. Saturday, according to KTVU News. The local outlet also reported that the competing boats had all blasted off just before 7 a.m. Sterud confirms that the collision occurred soon after.
“We’re still waiting on the sheriff’s report to know the details,” Sterud tells Outdoor Life. “None of us actually saw the accident.”
Sterud’s organization, the California Bass Federation, had brought together roughly 50 teams to participate in the California Open Challenge, which is part of the Student Angler Federation tournament series. Each team was made up of two high-school anglers and one adult boat operator. Sterud says the high-schoolers are not allowed to run the boats, and that all adults are required to have their boater’s card.
Sterud also notes that there was a safety meeting and a safety inspection before the boats launched Saturday morning from Orwood Resort, which is located off a channel that connects with the larger San Joaquin Delta.
The collision occurred less than a mile south of Orwood Resort and just north of Discovery Bay, according to KTVU News. This would have required the boaters to navigate a narrow channel known as the Werner Dredge Cut. That cut connects with a few other channels and sloughs near Discovery Bay itself, which contains a maze of residential boat docks.
The Contra Costa County Fire Protection District told the news outlet that when they arrived at the scene of the crash, they saw that one of the vessels had landed on top of the other. The Sheriff’s Office said that it was near a no-wake zone, and that only one of the boats had slowed down.
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“One of the boats slowed down to go 5 [miles per hour], the other boat that was behind it went right up on top, off to the side, and it wasn’t pretty,” a boat captain who said he was nearby told the outlet. “Luckily the kids were okay but the [boater] that was hit was hurt pretty bad. He got some injuries to his spine, his arm, and a facial injury too.”
The boat captain said all three occupants were ejected from the rear boat. They were all wearing life jackets and were able to swim to shore.
“It was a very unfortunate incident,” Sterud says. “Just terrifying.”
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