It was 10 years ago to the day Saturday when the Spectors and Brandeses, four old friends, were out on a pleasure cruise in one of their favorite parts of the state: the Connecticut River off Old Saybrook.

But the July 8, 2007, outing quickly turned from pleasant to tragic.

The two couples were waiting for the railroad bridge between Old Lyme and Old Saybrook to open, when a 20-foot motorboat — no one in its driver seat — smashed into their 14-foot sailboat, killing Susan Brandes.

She was 53 at the time, just a few months younger than her stepdaughter Dana Dillon is now. Dillon and her daughter, Kaci Stonier-Torres, went out on the river to the bridge opening on Saturday morning to lay flowers on the water in honor of Brandes. The Department of Energy & Environmental Protection took the two out.

"We don't have the opportunity to go to a cemetery and talk to her, like most people can," Dillon said. She added that because of the blunt force trauma of the accident, part of Brandes was lost in the river. "By going there, we feel part of her is still there."

Dillon lived in Wisconsin at the time of the accident but has since moved to Stafford Springs to take care of her father, Leland Brandes, who has Parkinson's disease.

Dillon said of her late stepmother, "She had a dry sense of humor. She loved to entertain, she loved the arts, she was funny, she could make you smile."

Along with commemorating Brandes, it's also important to Dillon to bring awareness to the dangers of drinking and boating.

DEEP, in its 2016 annual boating report, said there were 50 major boating accidents last year that involved 3 deaths, 14 vessels lost and approximately $1,181,598 of damage to property. All three of the boating fatalities were drownings in which the victims were not wearing a life jacket, DEEP said.

In addition, 40 people were injured in 25 of the accidents, with six of those accidents, or 24 percent, being alcohol-related.

When the motorboat smashed into the sailboat 10 years ago, Susan Brandes was crushed and thrown into the water. Her husband was attempting to save her when one of his hands was nearly severed by the steel propeller on the motorboat.

“We were just out sailing. Just trying to enjoy our day,” Franklin Spector, one of the four victims, said from the hospital room of his wife, Joan, in the aftermath of the accident.

Gregory Siege was the motorboat’s operator. Then Department of Environment officials said he had been drinking and fell into the water before his boat hit the sailboat. Because he wasn’t wearing a safety lanyard — a device that shuts off a boat’s engine if the operator leaves the driver’s seat — the motorboat continued on out of control.

“He was doing doughnuts, running over his own wake. He came close to us and splashed us. He came around again, and that’s when it happened,” Leland Brandes said after the accident. He said he reached for his cellphone to call the police.

He couldn’t remember anything after that, he said at the time. He was told he’d been rescued from the water.

Boats sent out to retrieve the motorboat had a difficult time getting the vessel under control. A Sea Tow boat was first to the scene, but capsized as it tried to stop the wayward motorboat. TowBoatU.S. of Old Saybrook sent three boats to help.

Paul Uccello, then operations manager for TowBoatU.S., described a chaotic scene. “It wasn’t just the bodies of the people who were bleeding; it was the confusion of it and all these people yelling and screaming and pointing,” he told The Day in 2007.

In the wake of the accident, the state passed several new drunken boating measures, some strengthening laws already on the books. In 2009, one such measure imposed tougher penalties when a death results from boating under the influence.

Siege initially was charged with first-degree reckless operation of a vessel while intoxicated; those charges later were upgraded to manslaughter, among several other crimes. He served four years in prison for the fatal accident.

Susan Brandes had a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from City College in New York and was in charge of a research arm of United Technologies, where she worked for more than a decade, a family member told The Day after the accident. Sailing was one of her passions.

Day Staff Writers Erica Moser and Karen Florin contributed to this report.

Boat safely

DEEP advises boaters to stay safe while on the water by:

• Boating sober; alcohol use is the leading contributing factor in recreational boater deaths. Alcohol and drug use impairs a boater’s judgment, balance, vision and reaction time.

• Wearing a life jacket; 83 percent of drowning victims were not wearing a life jacket, DEEP said.

• Taking a boating safety education course; 77 percent of deaths occurred on boats where the operator did not receive boating safety instruction, where instruction was known, DEEP said.