A few adrenaline-soaked minutes and a beach separated Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue (RCM SAR) Station 14 crew members and the small boat run aground at Mission Point in Davis Bay Wednesday evening, where they feared there may be someone in distress.
Thankfully, there was no one on the small boat –– a life jacket was possibly mistaken for a person by those reported the boat adrift –– and the evening served as an excellent training opportunity for the Gibsons-based volunteers.
The call came in just after 6:30 p.m. for Station 14 to investigate a vessel that had been spotted drifting somewhere between White Islets and Wilson Creek. The Gibsons volunteers, who were already to gather for regular training that evening, got a crew together, including two of their recent recruits and three more experienced people. “Thank goodness, because it turned into a bit of a show,” laughed coxswain Tess Huntly.
By the time the would-be rescuers reached the boat, the light was fading and the rogue vessel had beached itself on the spit at Davis Bay, and the tide was receding.
Even with RCM SAR’s shallow-draw vessel, they couldn’t get close enough to tow the boat off the sandbar.
By this time, the Coast Guard in Victoria was saying someone had possibly spotted a person on the vessel. Someone else had reported a shape hanging off the boat, adding to the concern.
“When we started, we thought it was not urgent at all. But when we actually got to the site, Victoria Coast Guard was saying, ‘We need you to find out within 10 minutes whether there's anybody on it,’” recounted Huntly.
“We hadn't seen anybody on it, but it was kind of hard, because we couldn't really get close,” she said. “The only way we could really approach it was from the land.”
The crew landed their boat on the beach to the south and put their two recent recruits ashore so they could walk along the shoreline and onto the spit.
Once they reached the little, light aluminium, flat-bottomed boat with a canopy, which appeared to be a small ferry, they confirmed no one was aboard. A PFD on the seat was possibly the “person” onlookers had seen. (While there’s speculation, it hasn’t been confirmed where the boat came from.)
“As is often the case, it sort of evolves as it goes along. You have multiple different witnesses who spotted it and different stories,” said Huntly.
The next issue, though, was how to secure the vessel because the tide was about to start coming back up and the little boat would float away again, becoming a hazard to other vessels –– not to mention there was fuel on it.
It ended up being a Coast Guard hovercraft that arrived and secured the boat for the night (and it was removed by the next morning).
Because the two RCM SAR members who had gone ashore were wet and cold, the Coast Guard offered them a ride to Gibsons Harbour –– they headed back at 39 knots on the hovercraft.
“It was very fun,” shared Huntly.
Beyond the good news that there was no one injured, the evening proved an excellent training opportunity for Station 14.
If the boat had been floating in the water, the crew would have just thrown a line on it and dragged it back to harbour, "easy-peasy." But because it was beached, they had to do more complicated procedures. The beach landing on an unknown shoreline, especially as darkness was descending, having to do reconnaissance and working with the hovercraft, was all “a really good, real-life training opportunity,” said Huntly.
The next morning, one of the people who had reported the boat and who had been in contact with Huntly, called her up to make sure everyone was OK. Huntly relayed no one had been aboard. So the caller thanked her. “He said, 'Thank you so much for your volunteer service. I'm a boater, and I so appreciate you guys being out there.”
