We usually don’t cover stories about out-of-control speedboats on the Lake of the Ozarks (or anywhere else, for that matter). But this one is just too bizarre to ignore.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol says that at 9:45 on the night before the Fourth of July, Rick Hansen, 66, from Wilton, Iowa, was driving his 2003 Baja speedboat down the lake when he crashed into a covered floating dock with a lot of boats at Spring Branch Cove.
The Baja hit one boat at the end of the dock and then launched itself up and into the dock’s roof, coming to rest with its bow sticking out of the roof and the stern resting on a pontoon boat. It was stuck.
Hansen was seriously injured and taken to a hospital. A female companion apparently was not hurt.
The next morning a local company called Rough Water Dock arrived with a barge and crane and tried to get the Baja dislodged from the roof. They were worried that if the Baja slipped it would crash into other boats docked there. At one point the Baja did slip a bit and fall on a pontoon boat, but then Rough Water Dock pulled it out the way it went in – a bit slower this time. Read more:
