An aluminum jet boat left a Moab dock last summer for a sunset excursion down the Colorado River with a full load of 28 mostly older passengers, tourists on a Utah vacation.
Allen and Karen Konen were sitting in the front of the craft taking in views of the Spanish Valley framed by sheer walls of sandstone. As the river curved right near the confluence with Mill Creek at the Portal, Allen Konen sensed something was wrong.
The boat wasn’t turning on pace with the river’s bend as the left bank loomed closer and closer.
“The turn got wider and wider and the boat went straight. My wife closed her eyes,” Konen, a resident of Loomis, Calif., said last week, recalling the Sept. 8 accident that made his Utah trip especially memorable despite the subsequent loss of his camera with all the pictures it stored.
The boat careened into the rocks, pitching passengers into the boat structures. The Konens’ seat tore loose, throwing them forward, then to the left with a second impact as the stern swung hard onto the shore. At least nine people, including Karen Konen, were taken by ambulance to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Another eight arrived by other means.
Now the tour operator, Canyonlands by Night, and the boat’s owner have filed court papers seeking to restrain potential claims from injured passengers, arguing the mishap was the result of an “unforeseeable and unpreventable mechanical failure.” The boat’s pilot, Courtney Atwood, lost steerage when a tie rod failed, severing the connection between the wheel and the jet pumps that guide the craft, according to the suit filed in U.S District Court.
The tour company is operated by the family of Grand County Councilman Rory Paxman, which charters the vessel from co-plaintiff Canyonlands River Tours LLC, also owned by the Paxman family.
“It was not our fault. We weren’t careless. That doesn’t make it less tragic,” said the operator’s lawyer John Lund. He brought the suit under maritime law, which comes into play because the Colorado River is a navigable body of water. The suit’s purpose is to alert potential claimants, who could live all over the world, that the federal court in Salt Lake City is the proper place to seek compensation, Lund said.
But the suit asks the court to find the boat operator and owner not liable for any losses arising from the accident and issue an injunction shielding them from any actions. If the court does find the companies liable, the suit asks awards to be capped at the value of the boat, which is worth $190,000.
Five years ago, Canyonlands by Night ran a jet boat into a sand bar, resulting in minor injuries to eight passengers, according to news accounts at the time. An empty boat dispatched to retrieve passengers ran aground.
The suit attributes fault for the latest accident to the “manufacturer, designer, supplier and others involved with the malfunctioning elements of the vessel’s steering mechanism.” It doesn’t name these parties, but it does suggest the passengers’ own actions contributed to their injuries.
A Utah company, Waterman Welding, built the jet boat in 1992. Canyonlands River Tours bought it last January and upgraded its engines in July with two 370-horsepower Yanmar marine diesel engines at a cost of $73,000, according to court filings.
The Utah Division of State Parks dispatched Dave Shearer, the harbormaster at Great Salt Lake Marina, to inspect the boat at the Canyonlands by Night’s yard, where he was met by Paxman and a National Park Service inspector.
Shearer’s report confirmed a tie rod failure caused the crash, which occurred while the boat was traveling at around 25 mph. The boat came completely out of the water on impact and its engines were in reverse, according to the report. Shearer suspects the four seats that tore loose had not been secured properly because neither the floor nor the seat mounts were damaged.
The impact dented 48 square feet of hull, resulting in an estimated $13,000 in damage, but otherwise the vessel was in “fair condition,” according to a report prepared by another marine inspector.
The boat is back at Waterman’s Kanab yard where it was repaired, according to owner Ken Robinson, who acquired Waterman in 2015 and renamed it Waterman Welding and Machining. He cautioned that it is no longer the same company that built the boat 25 years ago.
“That was two owners ago,” Robinson said. He said the boat’s recent engine replacement would not have had any effect on the steerage connection that had failed. Robinson is now performing further upgrades on the boat while it is out of service for the off-season.
“They want to do everything right. That’s the kind of company they are. They are retrofitting to make it top of the line,” Robinson said.
But Konen wonders whether it is right for the tour operator to close the door on suits, considering the injuries and disruptions some of the passengers endured. He recalled one person suffered a bad laceration on her forearm and an elderly woman was taken to a Grand Junction hospital with a possible broken clavicle. He was grateful no children were aboard.
“Most of the patients were over the age of 60, which increases the potential for fractures. ... They were primarily lacerations and significant bruising,” wrote Moab Regional Hospital CEO Jennifer Sadoff in an e-mail. “We train for these kind of events with our staff several times a year, and we put an incident command system into place immediately when they occur. In this event, we had just opened an Urgent Care in our building.”
After the accident, Konen called the tour company about his missing camera, which may have remained on the boat. But he was told the boat was under quarantine and could not be accessed. He had heard nothing further about the accident until last week when a Salt Lake Tribune reporter called.
His insurance covered his and his wife’s hospital visit and he has yet to get a bill for Karen’s ambulance ride.
“My sister got banged up. There were a lot of bloodied faces. From what happened to us, we feel fortunate,” Konen said. “The next day we tried to relax and try to collect ourselves. My sister’s husband went to the hospital to have his knee checked. We finished our vacation in Zion. We were pretty sore for a couple weeks. Most days were Advil days. We have some battle scars.”
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