Ten Years Old In a Runaway Speedboat

TEN YEARS OLD IN A RUNAWAY SPEED BOAT

Alone in a powerful speedboat out-of-control, a ten-year-old boy was whisked away. As it collided with two other boats no one could do anything but watch.

“If you don’t start behaving we won’t go to the beach tomorrow”. Tom Peters had heard that line so many times. He knew his mum’s threats were usually carried out, but going to the beach at the weekend was so much part of their routine that this threat never worked.

At ten-years old, he was a happy-go-lucky kid. He didn’t realize at the time that he had a pretty good lifestyle compared to many children his age. He lived in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Servants, company cars, swimming pools and even speedboats were normal perks of life for ex-patriots. Weekends almost always consisted of barbecues, water-skiing and snorkeling.

Tom couldn’t wait. School had been as boring as usual. He was struggling with English and his maths results weren’t great. Overall he was an average pupil, but by the end of the week his mind was on other things. He was passionate about snorkeling in the crystal clear waters of the Persian Gulf. Recently he had seen a small sand shark and a stingray. Although he was frightened at the time, they are easily startled by human activity and presented no great danger. Spotting them though made good playground stories.

Oil workers Alan Peters and Jim Ogilvy and their families had met three years earlier when they had both been posted from England to Brunei, Borneo. After two years there, by coincidence they were both posted to the Middle East. The contrast between living in a rain-forest country to a desert was a bit of a shock. However it didn’t take too long to feel at home in Dubai where the sun always shines.

In the early summer of 1978, it was a pleasant seventy-five degrees in the shade with a refreshing light breeze. Later in the summer temperatures could exceed one hundred degrees, hot enough for parked car tyres to stick to the tarmac! Everyone was making the most of the more bearable conditions. Even so sun block cream, cold drinks and regular shade were a must.

The Fourth Harbour, being the fourth one along the Abu-Dhabi road heading away from Dubai City, was a popular venue. It was the newest and largest of the harbours along this stretch of road. A wall of boulders sectioned off an area of sea about half a mile square. Inside this area the water remained relatively calm. High speeds could be attained easily by even the smallest of boats. Perfect conditions for water-skiing. Tom could stay more or less upright on water-skis.

The two families had got together for a day of relaxation. The harbour was at it busiest. The water was littered with children splashing around, people snorkeling, water-skiers and swimmers working off their over-indulgence of barbecued steaks. Even on days like this accidents were rare. In fact the only worries were the occasion appearance of large numbers of jellyfish, which could cause skin complaints.

Tom was envious of his friend Jake. Jim, Jake’s dad, had recently got together with some work-mates and bought a fiery-red speedboat. It was a classy looking boat boasting a powerful outboard motor. The novelty was still obvious in Jim’s face every time it was lowered into the water.

However, he had experienced a few difficulties with it. The four vinyl seats in the boat could become very slippery after skiers had been in and out of the water a few times. Even the middle-east sun didn’t always steam the surface dry. The two front seats faced forwards and didn’t present any problems. The rear two, however, faced rearward and were hard to sit still on under the rapid acceleration needed to pull a skier out of the water. The throttle lever was awkwardly placed to the right of the driver, hampering his exit from the boat. This was normally overcome by pushing it forward out-of-the-way after hitting the ‘kill switch’, which would stall the engine.

Jim’s daughter Tricia had come back from boarding school in England for the holidays. She only had a week left before her return to school, in which time she was anxious to get plenty of water-skiing practice. Today was one of her last opportunities to go out in the boat.

Jake and Tom had both been skiing and now it was Tricia’s turn. She was standing waist deep in the water having trouble adjusting the clips on her skis. Jim got out of the boat to lend her a hand. Meanwhile Jake became bored waiting and swam to shore. This left Tom sitting alone on a rear-facing seat waiting impatiently for a ride in the boat. He had noticed that it was drifting away from the shore but was unconcerned.

Jim became startled when he realized his boat was drifting out too far. He grabbed the ski rope and yanked at it. It takes quite an effort to pull a half-ton fibreglass shell the wrong way in the water. He wasn’t aware that the ignition was in the ‘run’ position and the throttle lever was at ‘full ahead’. He also didn’t anticipate the effect this was about to have.

The movement of water against the propeller turned it. The outboard motor fired up in a similar way to how a car engine would after a push-start.

The stern dropped like a stone as the bow pointed skyward. Tom slid off the seat onto the floor. He felt a dull thud as the portable petrol tank jerked loose and hit him in the temple.

Jim was still holding on to the ski rope! He felt a burning sensation as it was wrenched out of his grip. To his horror he watched spray spew from the engine as it howled, thrusting the boat away from the beach. At this point he didn’t realize there was anyone on board.

Tom’s mother, Maggie was a good distance down the beach. At first the familiar sound of a speedboat going to full power didn’t draw her attention. Plenty of skiers would be enjoying the thrills of the warm, royal blue water. She knew something was wrong when people started shouting further along the beach. That’s Jim’s boat! She realized with astonishment. Running in the direction of the commotion someone shouted “Your son’s the only one in it!”
"Oh God help him!" she yelled.

Reaching its maximum speed skimming on the waves, the boat had levelled-out. The reluctant passenger, stunned, was flat on his back and blinded by the mid-day sun. The hull pounded against his back beating the wind from his lungs as he gasped for breath. Tom was too shocked to realise how much danger he was in.

On a few occasions he had been allowed to drive the boat slowly around the harbour. Even in all the confusion he knew that all he had to do was grab hold of the throttle lever and pull it back to the ‘neutral’ position. It was only a few feet away from him. It seemed like a million miles away to a child who was being battered around like a pinball.

With no control over his fate, he was hurtling flat-out towards a large cabin cruiser! The impact would be similar to a runaway sports car smashing into a stationary motor home!

Maggie, now joined by her husband Alan, ran in a blind panic. They had nearly reached the spot where Jim was standing. She explains now that it was like running in slow-motion on the powdery loose sand.

Jim was rigid with awe. He could do nothing but watch in horror as his pride-and-joy was speeding away from him towards the stationary cruiser. "There are people on board!" he exclaimed.

A resounding boom filled the harbour as the speedboat rammed into the cruiser’s vertical side at a forty-five degree angle and span around in the direction of the beach!

Tom was still in shock. For a split-second he saw a row of horrified faces peering down at him. He recalls “It was just like a special-effect in a horror movie where a camera zooms in and out, spinning at the same time.” In all the confusion he momentarily felt an eerie peaceful feeling. Seeing other people at a time when he felt desperately alone and helpless gave him a false sense of security. But as suddenly as they had appeared he was whisked away from them. His vision became blurred with tears and his ears were ringing. The sound of the impact echoed in his head.

The engine ‘flooded’ and almost stalled. Thank goodness it’s over! He sighed to himself. But his heart missed a beat when he heard it recover. The nightmare was starting all over again!

The outboard motor kicked back to full power. “Oh please help me!” He cried out. There was nothing anyone could do. This speedboat seemed to have a mind of its own.

Tom remembers being kicked from side to side between the wall of the hull and the loose petrol tank. The boat was jerking left and right like a roller coaster ride as it tackled the waves with no one to hold the steering wheel steady. Normally the driver would steer the boat to cut through the waves, keeping the boat on a straight course.

A sickly taste nauseated Tom as showers of salty spray exploded over the bow smacking him in the face. His head ached, his eyes stung and his belly churned. Why won’t it all just stop? The events, which lasted less than a minute, seemed like hours.

An annual raft-race was one of the highlights of the Dubai calendar. Oil companies sponsored ingeniously engineered novelty rafts, which were appropriately constructed from oil drums coated in fibreglass.

Four Americans were fishing on one of these rafts not far from the shore. Having heard the speedboat colliding with the cabin cruiser they watched in horror as it as it was heading in their direction! They dived into the water in opposite directions scattering their fishing gear behind them. Just moments later the speedboat sliced the raft in half like a hot knife through butter and rocketed into the air. The engine let out a soul-stirring shriek as it raced well beyond its design speed with no water to provide a load on it. A line of blue smoke followed behind it like a stunt plane’s trail. The bow split on impact forming a hole about 12 inches across.

Landing nose-down, the hole scooped up water slowing the speedboat with a jolt. As the bow lifted a wave rushed down the centre aisle. Tom, now soaked, was thrown against the base of the back seat. He choked on a mouthful of sea water.

The journey finally came to an abrupt end. With an almighty thud followed by a thunderous rumble the craft screeched to a halt high up the beach. The stunned passenger gazed upwards at a haze of unfamiliar faces staring down at him. Voices echoed through his head. He could hear phrases through the mumbling asking if he was hurt and whether he could stand. It was a few moments before he realised he was safe.

Pushing through the crowd two faces appeared pleasantly familiar. Panting breathlessly his mum cried out. Thank God you’re safe! His dad’s large grip felt reassuringly steady against Tom’s shaky hand as he was lifted from the battered wreckage.

It amazed everyone on the crowded beach. Most of them hadn’t realised that there was someone in the speedboat and were amazed to see the frail figure of this ten-year-old walking away unaided.

Bruised and shaking, he made his way along the beach to the point where his horrifying journey had started. A cool can of lemonade and a few minutes of sitting on firm ground was all the treatment he needed to recover from the shock. His only scars were the guilt of not having done something to stop the boat before it sustained so much damage.

Miraculously the cabin cruiser was undamaged apart from a scratch along its side. Its passengers were more interested in Tom’s condition than their boat’s paintwork. The fishermen however were devastated when they reached the shore to see the remains of their raft.

Jim Ogilvy and the other co-owners of the speedboat worked night and day repairing the speedboat’s hull. In three days they had it repaired allowing Tricia an opportunity to water-ski before returning to boarding school. The engine that fortunately stalled on impact with the beach, still ran smoothly. It is incredible that it hadn’t caught fire or blown up along with its fuel tank. To this day Tom and his parents believe that God protected everyone involved in the sequence of horrors that occurred that day.

On returning to school Tom’s class were given an assignment to write. An essay on the subject of what they had done at the weekend. For the first time ever Tom’s results were the best in his class. The starting line began “The name’s Bond, James Bond….”