Beautiful story, although not sure what he was doing at sea in such conditions.
The take away for me is that discovering the goodness in people's heart when you've lost everything is worth more than all our junk.
The take away for me is that discovering the goodness in people's heart when you've lost everything is worth more than all our junk.
When things go bad on a boat, they go bad fast. The skiff he planned to hop in and get to shore sank before he could get into it. He did get his survival suit on, which kept him alive long enough to be rescued.
This is a 70 year old man who's spent his life fishing in the area. This was his day where almost everything went wrong. But he'd done enough right on his boat, and in his training, to set himself up for rescue.
I live in Sitka, where the helicopter crew that did this rescue is based. We hear stories about these kinds of rescues all the time. People have deep respect for USCG personnel here.
Oftentimes, we find government resources wasted for little value. Many a life, however, from pollution, man’s violence, or the intemperance of the sea, has been saved by the Coast Guard.
An overlooked service I feel, nearly two decades since I left.
Thank you for your service, and your colleagues' as well. I agree, most people have no idea how hard USCG personnel train, and what goes on when they head out to conduct rescues.
And in the end he was saved by a device he didn't know had activated and whose batteries he hadn't checked in years.
But yeah, doing enough of the right things at the right time probably saved him.
Things can go from 'what a nice cruise' to 'what on earth am I doing here' in about 15 minutes.
I once nearly drowned on IJsselmeer during a rigging test that was supposed to last a half hour and that ended with a severely damaged boat because of a storm that materialized extremely rapidly and out of nowhere.