It looked like just too many little boats on the water. Everybody got rescued.
Lake Travis is Austin area-it may have rained there-it is raining off and on from East to the border in West Texas today...
I hope all of their guns were onboard. /s
Possibly overloaded?
Possibly poor skippers?
Possibly drinking involved?
Possibly FR-style boating accidents?
Honey, do you think I remembered to put the drain plug back in?
Or
Here hold my beer!— moments.
The weather was okay at the time. Lake Travis is a fairly large lake so normal waves can be difficult. The real problem comes from houseboats which create a huge swell, that is slow moving and deceptive. You don’t always see them coming and if a small boat hits one at the wrong angle it can be really bad. With so many boats in such a small area and house boats mixed in, it is possible that the swells were running all over at every angle. Even if you have operated a boat all your life, you can still be caught off guard if you haven’t experienced it before.
Summer weekend boaters.
They always keep the Coast Guard and Towboat services busy.
Saw someone launch his old wood boat once. He seemed to do everything like he hadn't done it in years. Wouldn't start, and he drained the battery trying, so he moved to the back of the boat and started pulling the pull rope, still trying to get it lit.
About the fourth pull, he went right through the bottom up to his waist. Dry rot...
A number of good descriptions by the posters above of ways to sink a small boat, most of them preventable. One thing not mentioned though re. big boats and big wakes is that every boat is legally responsible for damage done by its wake. It can be construed as negligence if the wake from a large houseboat or cruiser whacks out another craft.
I saw a nice ski boat sink once on perfectly calm water. It was loaded heavy though then about 3 people stood on one side and the boat simply rolled a bit and the gunnel dipped under water. Literally it went from floating to submerged in seconds. All the passengers were in the water but thankfully wearing life jackets. Nearby boats had the people rescued before we could turn around and get to the scene to help. We did pick up flotsam debris to get the scene cleaned up some.