A boat crash that killed three on Flagstaff Lake has the hallmarks of other incidents involving a specific model of pontoon boat recalled this year due to safety issues.
The boat, a 2024 18-foot Sea-Doo Switch, was one of thousands recalled by Sea-Doo’s parent company Bombardier Recreational Products in February due to an increased risk of the boat nosediving into the water, causing it to flip end over end on its bow.
That matches the description of Sunday’s crash in the western Maine town of Eustis, according to the Maine Warden Service. The agency is still investigating the incident that killed three of the seven people on board, but it has said the boat flipped despite the driver’s attempt to correct it. The weather conditions were calm that afternoon.
Killed in the crash were 53-year-old Farhana Nasir, 23-year-old Kiran Akbar and 22-year-old Noor Nasir, who were all from New York state. The boat was driven by John Morris, 50, of Eustis, who did not respond to calls and emails this week. It is unclear if his boat had undergone the work associated with the recall.
The notice for all Sea-Doo Switch models came shortly after Goldberg & Rosen, a Florida law firm, filed a lawsuit on behalf of a family whose young daughter was trapped underwater after their boat flipped in 2024. The 15-month-old suffered a catastrophic brain injury from oxygen deprivation, Judd Rosen, the family’s lawyer, said in an interview.
“This is one of the worst, most dangerous vessels I’ve ever seen,” Rosen said. “These pontoon boats become death traps.”
Another Switch-flipping incident in Virginia in 2024 killed a 9-year-old. The Maine incident appears to be the deadliest one involving these boats, Rosen said. The company, Quebec-based Bombardier, said in a statement that the boats comply with all applicable standards and regulations.
“We have been made aware of this tragic accident and would like to express our deepest sympathies to the families,” spokesperson Emilie Proulx said. “We take any incident involving our products very seriously and we are currently investigating this case.”
The company’s recall work includes partially sealing the hulls and affixing two new warning stickers to the boat advising against overloading the front of the vessel. Since Rosen’s firm filed the lawsuit in February, he said his firm has heard from Switch owners and lawyers who have shared similar stories of the boat flipping end over end.
“[Bombardier is] trying to do everything they can to control the boating market and make money off of these families and sacrificing the safety of lives and of children while lining their pockets with money,” Rosen said. “It’s an age-old problem with big business and corporations.”
The Sea-Doo Switch first hit the market in 2022 and was a change of pace for Bombardier and its subsidiary Sea-Doo, which is known for personal watercraft. The Switch is essentially a pontoon boat built on top of the personal watercraft frame, said Peter Swanson, a longtime journalist who writes about boating on Substack.
The boats have a large, central hull in the middle as well as smaller hulls on the left and right meant to make the vessel turn more like personal watercraft, Swanson said. On the platform of the boat, there is a handlebar to control it, and seats can easily be moved around the vessel.
What also makes the Switch stand out compared to other pontoon boats is that the vessel’s hulls aren’t fully sealed, meaning they take on water during use, he said. That is part of the problem with the boat, Rosen, the lawyer, said.
When those hulls take on water, weight is shifted, which contributed to the incidents in Virginia and Florida, he said. In both of them, the drivers appeared to be decelerating, which Rosen said causes water to move forward in the hulls and weigh the front down, causing it to start to nosedive into the water.
In Swanson’s experience writing about boats, speed is the more common factor that predicates a fatal crash, he said. With the Switches, it’s the exact opposite that seems to be happening before something disastrous happens.
“It’s counterintuitive that when you’re trying to slow down, that’s the moment that you might be in most peril on this boat,” he said.
Bangor Daily News investigative reporter Sawyer Loftus may be reached at sloftus@bangordailynews.com.