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A passenger in the boat on May 31, Bruce Turner of Council Bluffs, was ejected when the boat struck its own wake.

Something sounds odd about this. I'm wondering how a boat going 116 mph can "hit its own wake" hard enough to do this.

For that to happen would require them to have circled back in some manner, and gotten back up to speed, and still hit enough wake to a) eject the passenger, b) not eject the driver, and c) not flip the boat.

The black box might show how this could happen, but it does sound odd.

As for the other -- any guesses as to whether the victim was conscious after he hit the water at 116 mph?

For some more details from past articles, the boat did race upstream, turn around, and then race back downstream. The 116mph was on the downstream leg. Since the current here is about 15-16mph, that means it was actually traveling "only" about 100mph over the water. Still VERY fast.

There were some witnesses who said he was traveling like a bat-out-of-hell, but naturally, Ed denied it. That was before they got the GPS data. I don't know for sure, but I would almost be willing to bet they were both drunk and, yes, Bruce probably was not conscious after hitting the water at 100mph or more. It is certainly not something I would want to do.

The boat had a Garmin GPS unit on board.

Experts from the system's manufacturer in Olathe, Kan., were able to determine the boat's exact speed - 116 mph - as Turner fell overboard, he said.

I have a handheld GPS unit from Garmin (Olathe, KS) that I use when traveling. The unit records average speed, average moving speed, maximum speed, etc. in addition to keeping a log of the exact route traveled. This would have showed all turns made by the boat from which could be calculated from the speed and the type of boat right where it would have crossed it's own wake.

I can use my unit walking around the neighborhood and it shows me my speed and the exact route traveled. I can plug it into the computer and plot it on a map.

Boats regularly are bounced or swamped by wakes, depending on the angle they are hit. And a boat capable of hitting such speeds surely are able to accelerate sufficiently to do a figure 8 and resume high speed. The pilot would have a hold of the steering as well as see the coming bump. A passenger in the back, possibly swigging a cold one, could be completely unaware of what was coming.