It’s a compilation of everything that can go wrong-did go wrong. Boat had limited exits, none of the passengers were donning PFD’s, a gust front along the line of severe storms created straight line winds that apparently exceeded 80MPH. Assuming that winds were nearly that high, that’s sufficient wind to create whitecap waves on a normally flatwater lake.
if the boat didn’t capsize but was just swamped and sunk, the canopy was probably more of an issue than lack of PFD.. at least for passengers who could swim. I would think...
If you are under that canopy and the boat is going directly down fast, you are getting pulled down with it.
I believe this is what happened to one of these a few years back... sunk and I believe the passengers were in PFD’s, but they could not get out of the boat fast enough...