Rescuers pulled a man from the cold waters of Cowichan Bay at 2:45 p.m. on Nov. 23.
Members of then Royal Canadian Marine Search & Rescue, Station 34 Cowichan, received a report of a capsized vessel and a person in the water at 2:19 p.m. on Saturday and Station 34 volunteer Mark Winfield said the rescuers found the Cowichan Bay fire department on scene when they got there.
He said the firefighters had spotted the small aluminum skiff in the water from which the man fell out of, but the man was not visible at that time in the calm waters.
"Thanks to the firefighters, we had an idea where we could find him, and our rescue crew searched the area of Cowichan Bay north of the marinas," Winfield said.
"Our crew headed towards the docks of Pacific Industrial & Marine, which was the nearest point of land, and found him hanging on to a piling in the water with one arm about a quarter of a mile away from his boat, and he had one of his arms through a life jacket and was holding a cell phone in the other hand."
Winfield said the cell phone was waterproof and the man had called 911 for help and the call was routed to the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria, but the centre didn't have an exact location for him.
"We think he was hunting because he was dressed in camouflage and had bird decoys. The skiff he was in was flat-bottomed and not very stable, and that could have been a reason why he fell out," he said.
'We pulled him out of the water at 2:45 p.m. so he was in the water for at least half an hour. He was conscious but quite hypothermic when we got to him and barely had enough strength left to hang on the piling so he was in real need of assistance. He was lucky we got to him in time."
Winfield said the rescue unit transported the man to an ambulance crew that waiting in Hecate Park to take him to hospital, and he was released later that night.
“The unit then retrieved the capsized boat and took it back to the Fisherman's Wharf for later recovery by the owner,” he said.
"The Canadian Coast Guard arrived a few minutes after the rescue and aided the rescue crew in recovering some of the material from the boat from the water. We'd like to thank everyone who assisted with this rescue."
