Sea Tow’s call volume up 31 percent

SOUTHOLD, N.Y. – Sea Tow Services International, Inc. received nearly 4,000 calls, responded to nearly 3,000 boater requests for on-water assistance and provided over 1,100 tows to both members and non-members over the Fourth of July weekend, the company said in a statement today.

Between July 1 and July 5, Sea Tow’s national call center saw a 31-percent increase in calls to its 800 number compared to 2003. In addition, the company’s network of over 100 franchises burned over 16,000 gallons of fuel, representing more than $36,000 in operating costs during the four-day weekend.

“The significant surge in our network’s overall on-water activity further proves our assessment earlier this year that 2004 is a much busier year than in years past,” explained Captain Joe Frohnhoefer, chairman and CEO of Sea Tow. “We believe the increase is also due, in great part, to the extremely good weather conditions throughout most of the country.”

Frohnhoefer also said the company, as a whole, considered the entire holiday weekend a success based on the fact that there were fewer boating accidents or other serious problems in relation to the sheer numbers of boaters that were on the water this past weekend. He credited the decrease, in great part, to the marine industry’s efforts to heighten safe boating awareness, and to the fact that high fuel prices may be keeping boaters closer to home.

The most common assistance calls throughout the weekend were for fuel drops, jumpstarts and soft ungroundings from boaters who found themselves on unexpected shoals or sand bars, Sea Tow said.

The company saw a 25-percent decrease in requests for Trailer Care roadside assistance from last year. Early reports indicated that the decline may have been, in part, due to the fact that a majority of trailer boaters seemed to have kept their boats in-water for the crux of the weekend.

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