A Gibsons boater who flew overboard and clung to his motor for three hours without a life jacket was rescued after a resident spotted him through her telescope.
In response to the mayday call in the early evening of Aug. 23, the Gibsons Coast Guard Auxiliary and the private operator of the C-TOW Navigator hauled the hypothermic man out of the water and took him to the waiting RCMP members and B.C. Ambulance Service paramedics at the government dock, where he was taken to St. Mary's Hospital.
The lone driver of the small speedboat, Brian Noden, a local logger, is back on his feet and covered in bruises, according to his wife Arleigh.
"He's just black and blue from flying out of the boat and catching himself on the windshield," she said. "He hit a wave and the wave kicked the boat up; air went under the boat and it basically went straight up in the air and landed on its transom with the motor still going. As soon as the motor hit the water it bolted forward and he just got launched. Then when he hit the water the boat basically came down and pretty much landed on part of him." The boat then stalled and he grabbed on to the motor.
Wayne Skinner (who operates C-TOW, a marine towing, water taxi and tour business) was the first to arrive on scene after the mayday call. Skinner hung on to Noden in the middle of Shoal Channel off Soames Point for about five minutes to keep him afloat until the Coast Guard Auxiliary arrived just before 7 p.m.
"You could see marks on his arms and his chest from trying to get back up into the boat," Skinner said.
Skinner commended Granthams Landing resident Suzanne McGovern for reporting her sighting of the adrift boat.
"Without that call, the man surely would have died," Skinner said. "When I got to him he was very blue due to the cold water and was on his last ounce of energy to stay afloat."
McGovern had reported the unmanned boat to the RCMP, who alerted the Coast Guard. She had thought the boat sitting in the middle of the channel was unusual since there were no crab trap buoys nearby.
"Lots of boats go back and forth to Keats [Island] but they don't usually just stop - that's what caught my eye." She didn't see the man in the water until taking a second look through her telescope.
"When I looked through the telescope, the current had shifted the boat. There was nobody in the boat, but I saw a man in the water clinging to the motor." She could see the man was wearing jeans, a t-shirt and no life jacket. There was a light breeze and the water was fairly calm at the time; however, the approaching nightfall was a concern.
The Coast Guard phoned her back and asked her to stay by the phone and keep watch.
"It was really, really frustrating looking through a telescope and watching this poor man trying to pull himself into his boat and he didn't have the strength to do it," McGovern said. "I'm kind of amazed with all the people who live on the water and all the boats that went by him that I'm the only one who noticed."
She noted the rescue was a team effort and was glad she had seen him.
"I spotted him at about 5:30 [p.m.] and by the time they hauled him out of the water it was already dusky out."
One of the Coast Guard crew drove Noden's boat back to the government dock and then to the marina the following day.
Tony Brearley was the coxswain of Coast Guard Unit 14's Zodiac during the rescue. He noted that although Noden - who appeared to be in his mid-40s - was not wearing a life jacket, there was a life jacket in the boat.
"Accidents are just that; you don't expect them to happen," Brearley said.
Deputy unit leader Dave Cudlipp said Unit 14 is called with reports of a person in the water a couple times a year on average. During the summer, they are called out about once a week, usually for boats running adrift or aground. The unit currently has 15 members and is in dire need of more volunteers, he noted. Const. Roy Moore said the RCMP are not pursuing any charges at this point.
"We're still at the point of investigating. The explanation given as to what happened, there is some discrepancies in that."
