On May 28, 2003, my 11 year old son, Anthony, died doing something he loved. We had spent the afternoon skiing and wakeboarding with our friends, on their Calabria ski boat. It had been an awesome day and we were heading to shore when Anthony and a friend of his began holding onto the swim platform at the rear of the boat, essentially body surfing.
We had done this at least 150 times before. It's a fun activity holding on to the platform while the boat is going not much more than a couple of miles per hour. I've learned since then that some people call this activity "teak surfing" or "teak dragging," but we just thought of it as body surfing behind the boat; a way of cooling down after a day of boarding and skiing.
We were going so slow and watching the boys laugh and enjoy the warm water of the late afternoon. And then in an instant he was gone. We dove in and searched for what seemed like forever. But he was gone. We couldn't figure out what had happened. We knew Anthony was a strong swimmer; and a propeller strike was impossible with the prop location being under the body of the boat well forward of the swim platform.
Never did it even cross my mind that the killer could be carbon monoxide being emitted from the boat's exhaust ports. I now know learned that this boat emitted it's exhaust right under the swim platform, at levels that can produce death in seconds. Anthony took just a few breaths of this deadly exhaust and in an instant...he was gone forever.