A family of seven was transferred to a different duck boat Thursday afternoon, swapping places with a woman and her three children due to space constraints.
The boat they were supposed to be on would eventually sink into the choppy water of Table Rock Lake. Seventeen of the 31 people on board drowned Thursday evening in this idyllic state park in Branson, near the Arkansas border.
"We would have been on that boat but our family size was bigger," said Gina Lemus. "That could have been us."
She, her husband, Paul, and their five children watched in horror as the boat ahead of them struggled through the water about 125 feet away from them.
Their captain radioed for the boat's status but never received a response. As the boat the Lemus family was on reached land, "that's when they went under," Gina Lemus said.
Passengers kept looking around them, asking where the other boat was, until they could no longer see it.
"If we would have stayed in a minute longer, we probably would have gone under," Gina Lemus said.
They were in the water for about 15 minutes but it seemed "like an eternity," Gina Lemus said.
The last duck boat left at 6 p.m. from the "Ride the Ducks" headquarters in downtown Branson. The Lemuses were on a 5:30 p.m. boat.
An issue with the propeller on their boat delayed them by about 30 minutes from entering the water, meaning they were closer to shore when the storm hit, they said.
If not for the issue with the propeller, "we would have been in deeper water, further into the lake. It might have been two boats instead of one," Gina Lemus said.
The forecasts predicting stormy weather and high winds "should have been considered," Paul Lemus said, before the last boats embarked.
"That has to be something you look at daily," he said.
Added Gina Lemus: "It should not have happened. I don't think they imagined or thought this could happen."
When their boat hit the water somewhere between 6:30 and 6:45 p.m. _ about the time or shortly after a thunderstorm warning hit the area _ there were clear skies overhead but storms could be seen in the distance. They believe the boat that sank hit the water before theirs but weren't sure how much earlier.
When the fast-moving storm hit minutes later, their boat jostled to and fro and heavy plastic curtains were electronically lowered over the sides. The Lemus family was terrified.
As their duck boat made it to shore, everyone on board "cheered ... once we touched that cement."
Gina Lemus said her captain told the passengers that he had never seen any kind of storm like that in all the time he had been on the water.
Despite the conditions, the Lemuses' captain never encouraged passengers to put on life jackets.
Paul Lemus wondered if the captain of the other boat initiated life-saving procedures when the conditions started becoming treacherous.
"If I'm the captain, you know you're going down, you got to get life jackets on and get everyone to the back of the boat," Paul Lemus said.
But in a moment of panic he said he could see how such life-saving measures might have been overlooked on the other boat.
Escaping through the plastic curtains would be difficult for children and the elderly, Paul Lemus said, so much so that they would "prevent you from even trying to get out."
"You need to swim toward the back of the boat," he said. "But there being 30-plus people in there, I could just ... just all the chaos happening in there I think it would be difficult to calmly line up and go out the back."
