Capt. Derek Debord and his wife, Cheryl, accept the coveted TowBoatUS Tower of the Year Award at the 2024 TowBoatUS Conference in Savannah, Georgia. (credit: Stacey Nedrow-Wigmore/BoatUS)
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LAKE NORMAN, N.C., Feb. 5, 2024 – TowBoatUS Lake Norman, a local on-water towing and assistance company for recreational boaters, was awarded Tower of the Year at the annual gathering of the TowBoatUS fleet owners, family and crew in Savannah, Georgia, yesterday. Owned by captain Derek Debord, TowBoatUS Lake Norman was chosen from more than 130 independently owned TowBoatUS towing companies across the nation.

The company provides 24/7 towing, soft ungrounding, battery jumps and fuel drop-offs to Lake Norman boaters and is one of 300 TowBoatUS locations in the U.S. and British Columbia, Canada. A former Hickory Water Rescue Squad member and current deputy with the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office, the U.S. Coast Guard-licensed Debord purchased the small company with his wife, Cheryl, in 2012, and has grown his Lake Norman fleet of red response vessels from two to six. It was singled out at the TowBoatUS Annual Towing Conference for its smooth-running operations and community relations.

“Outside of being a top-notch operation, TowBoatUS Lake Norman regularly engages with its community through education and boating safety advocacy,” said TowBoatUS operations manager Chris Dolan. “For well over a decade, this company has been a shining example of what a towing company can accomplish through hard work, relentless passion and unyielding professionalism.” Additional factors cited included the company’s BoatUS Unlimited Towing Membership sales, on-water digital dispatch response rate and company towing captain ratings.

Last year, the entire North America TowBoatUS fleet of more than 600 towboats responded to more than 100,000 on-water requests for routine assistance. For more information go to TowBoatUS.com/Towing.

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About TowBoatUS:

Boat Owners Association of The United States (BoatUS) is the nation's leading advocacy, services and safety group for recreational boaters. We are the Boat Owners Auto Club™ and provide our nearly 800,000 members with a wide array of helpful services, including 24-hour on-water towing that gets you safely home when your boat won’t, jump-starts, fuel delivery, and soft ungroundings. The TowBoatUS towing fleet is North America’s largest network of towing ports with more than 300 locations and over 600 red towboats, responding to more than 90,000 requests for assistance each year. The BoatUS App makes it easy to summon water and road assistance 24/7 and can speed response times (BoatUS.com/App). For more information go to BoatUS.com/Towing.