Scott Rook quit wearing an inflatable life jacket the last time the Elite Series came to Lake Champlain in 2007. Rook was wearing an inflatable while trying to get back to the weigh-in site while fighting five-foot waves.
“I thought, if I go down here, it’s 400 feet deep and two or three miles to the bank,” Rook recalled. “If that life jacket fails to inflate, I can’t swim that far in these waves. It was as scared as I’ve ever been.”
Rook was standing on a dock at the launch site in Plattsburgh Marina after the cancellation was announced this morning. He pointed to the traditional vest life jacket in the driver’s seat of his boat, and said, “I’ve worn that ever since. It was worse than this that day. It was awful.”
Rook agreed with the cancellation decision today, even though he wasn’t planning to make the long run south to Ticonderoga, like he did in 2007.
“I’m going north,” he said. “But it’s bad north too. I came back (from practice) yesterday afternoon and it was bad. It’s blowing more now than it was then.”