Runaway boat stopped by teen on jet ski on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee
LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE, N.H. - A Massachusetts teen managed to stop a runaway boat going in circles on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.
"I got to stop this thing somehow"
The 17-year-old Ludlow boy managed to ride in on the back of a jet ski and hop onto the moving boat.
"I was like, 'I got to stop this thing somehow.' Everybody else was just standing around waiting for something to happen," said Brady Procon.
A group of children were learning to sail when their instructor reached down to pick up a floating tennis ball he was using for a lesson. Procon said that's when the mast of one of their boats knocked the throttle to full blast and sent the instructor overboard. The boat whipped in circles for several minutes.
"We were sitting on the back porch, and there was a bunch of noise in the no wake zone. My dad said, 'Hey there is nobody on that boat,'" said Procon.
"All of a sudden, I hear 'rrrrrrrr,' the boat zinging around. And I turned around and looked and I saw the boat out there circling," said Rich Bono, a neighbor who captured a recording of Procon's heroics.
Bono called the marina patrol on his radio, but no one responded. Procon then hopped onto a jet ski to try to get the children out of the water. While riding, he saw a stranger on another jet ski.
Heading to the Navy in two months
"I yelled, 'Hey let me up on your jet ski,' and he said, 'Alright, hop on! Let's go!'" said Procon, "I jumped off my jet ski and hopped onto his jetski, and then we chased the boat down, and I jumped off it."
Procon nearly stuck the landing, but the spinning boat sent him slamming into the seat on the boat. His life preserver helped to cushion the blow to his ribs.
"As soon as I got on the boat, I grabbed the wheel and yanked on the throttle, almost put the thing right into reverse," said Procon.
"There's a million things that could go wrong. If he had missed that boat and landed in the water, that thing could have come around. The propeller could have chewed him up. He could have bounced off the boat, and sent it in another direction," said Bono. "I understand he is heading off the Navy in two months, so he will have a story to tell everybody.."
Procon will indeed be heading off to the Navy in September. In true action hero fashion, he wants to learn how to dispose of explosives.