A boater is fortunate to be alive after spending approximately three hours in the waters near Nanoose Bay after his vessel capsized Monday evening (Sept. 23).
A woman and her daughter heard screaming while kayaking near Wallis Point close to Nanoose Harbour and called 911, according to the Canadian Coast Guard.
The Joint Rescue Centre in Victoria took over co-ordination of the rescue and sent out the CCGS Cape Cockburn and a fast response craft, as well as RCMSAR 27 to respond.
Coast Guard’s Marine Communications and Traffic Services broadcast the mayday and two vessels, the Empress III and NPA Osprey, were close by and responded.
Robb Wilson was aboard the Empress III water taxi and had nearly reached Winchelsea Island when he received a call from the rescue co-ordination centre in Victoria.
"We immediately turned around and headed back to that area, had a look around," Wilson said. "We didn’t see anything out in the open there."
The rescue centre patched Wilson into a conference call with the woman who had reported the incident, and she was able to direct the Empress to the capsized boat, a few hundred yards off shore at the entrance to Nanoose Bay.
"He crawled up partially out of the water and was clinging to the boat when we came upon him," Wilson said. "I had a commissionaire on the boat with me and we were able to toss him a life ring and get him to hang on it."
The man, whom Wilson estimated to be in his sixties, was conscious and able to hold onto the ring, Wilson added, but “he wasn’t in great shape," and was suffering from hypothermia.
“We were struggling to get him up on the swim grid, he was a larger fellow and he wasn’t able to help," Wilson said. "He was just dead weight in the water."
Around this time, the French Creek 1 fast response craft arrived.
Wilson said the coast guard was able to pull the man onto their craft using a "kind of a cargo net ladder thing that they deployed on one side of their boat".
Coast Guard Rescue Specialists then administered immediate first aid.
"The person was wearing a life jacket but had been in the water for approximately three hours and was severely hypothermic," the coast guard said in an emailed statement to the PQB News.
A member of RCMSAR 27 assisted the coast guard on the French Creek 1 as the patient was transported to Schooner Cove, where they were handed over to BC Emergency Health Services.
RCMSAR 27 recovered the overturned skiff and brought it to the dock.
"This rescue was a result of the initial 911 call from the two kayakers and the quick responses from our French Creek lifeboat and Fast Response crews, our response partners from RCMSAR 27, and the two vessels of opportunity Empress III and NPA Osprey," the Canadian Coast Guard said in its statement.
BC EHS said it received a call at 7:20 p.m. and sent an ambulance with primary care paramedics to meet the coast guard vessel in the 3500-block of Dolphin Drive. Paramedics provided emergency medical treatment to one patient who was transported to hospital.
Wilson said he believes if the man had not been found that evening, he would not have survived the night in the water.
"It was fortunate we got to him before dark. I mean it by this time it’s 7:30 or so and it’s dusk and the light is going down. It would have been much more difficult to find him after dark," Wilson said.
He added it's a good thing the man was wearing a life jacket, but said there was a "big swell" on the water that day and the man's boat was too small for those conditions.
