On-the-Water Boating Assistance Comes to Three North Carolina Lakes
New TowBoatUS Ports Open at Falls Lake, Lake Gaston and Kerr Lake
BEAUFORT,
NC, May 31, 2012 — Capt. Lee Sykes has been helping coastal
North Carolina boaters get safely home for the last six years as a
captain and then owner of TowBoatUS Beaufort. Now, he has expanded
his recreational boat
towing business to several inland lakes. This spring he opened
three new TowBoatUS freshwater locations: Falls Lake in the Raleigh-Durham
area, and Lake Gaston and Kerr Lake along the North Carolina/Virginia
border. Sykes has also been operating TowBoatUS Jordan Lake since
2011, and his company also serves Sharon Harris Lake with a trailerable
response boat.
“We saw the need for it,” Sykes said, explaining why he
turned his attention to inland waters. “A lot of the people
we serve in Beaufort trailer their boats to the ocean one weekend
a month, but the rest of the time they go boating on the lakes near
their homes. We kept getting calls from them when they had engine
trouble or ran out of gas or needed a jumpstart on a lake, and saw
an opportunity. Now we are there to help 24 hours a day, seven days
a week.”
Much like an auto club for boaters, TowBoatUS offers on-the-water
towing plans for freshwater boaters and anglers that costs just
$58 a year and includes BoatUS or BoatUS ANGLER membership.
“You can’t always count on a friend or a Good Samaritan
coming to help,” Sykes said. “It gives our members a good
feeling to know there is always someone there to help, and the bill
is paid for.” Without a towing plan, boaters face costs that
average $600 per incident nationally.
Sykes is a USCG-licensed captain who worked as a firefighter, EMT
and charter-fishing captain before he began working with TowBoatUS.
Experienced USCG-licensed local captains run all three of the new
North Carolina TowBoatUS ports. Fast response boats, sporting distinctive
red hulls with white bow stripes and “TowBoatUS” lettering
on the sides, are based at each location. All are fully rigged for
marine towing, salvage work and pollution control, and carry extra
fuel, engine fluids, pumps, dive gear, battery jump packs and towing
gear.
TowBoatUS Falls Lake is based at the Rolling View
Marina in Durham, where Sykes keeps a 24-foot Carolina Skiff to provide
assistance anywhere on the 12,000-acre lake which stretches northward
for 22 miles from a dam just outside of Raleigh to a confluence of
rivers near Durham.
Lake Gaston, created in the 1960s from the impoundment of the Roanoke
River, snakes along the North Carolina/Virginia border between Kerr
Lake and Roanoke Rapids. TowBoatUS Lake Gaston is centrally located
at Morningstar Marina in Littleton, NC, and its fast, seaworthy 20-foot
Downeaster can reach boaters anywhere on the 35-mile–long, 20,300-acre
lake.
Sykes has based a 22-foot Privateer at Satterwhite Point Marina in
Henderson, NC to assist boaters on the 53-mile-long, 50,000-acre Kerr
Lake, which also spans the North Carolina/Virginia border. One of
the largest lakes in the Southeast, Kerr Lake (called Buggs Island
Lake by Virginians) is one of the premiere boating spots in the South.
Boaters from either state can expect fast and efficient help from
TowBoatUS anywhere on the lake.
Boaters can contact any of Sykes’s TowBoatUS ports by calling
919-303-1669 or 252-728-5088, by hailing on VHF channel 16, or calling
the BoatUS toll-free Dispatch Service at 800-391-4869. To see the
new locations on a map go to www.BoatUS.com/ServiceLocator.
Boat Owners Association of The United States (BoatUS)
is the nation's leading advocate for recreational boaters providing
over half a million members with a wide array of consumer services,
including on-the-water towing assistance provided by TowBoatUS and
Vessel Assist. Combined, these two towing fleets offer boaters, anglers
and sailors the world’s largest network of towing ports with
over 300 locations and over 600 towing assistance vessels —
three times larger than the closest competitor.
