Captain rescued for four to five hours in water, says report
Rescuers from Fisheries and Oceans Canada saved a sailboat captain in British Columbia who was on board a sailboat earlier this week, according to a report.
The Coast Guard received a report of an unoccupied sailboat on the shore of Cortes Island, north of the Sunshine Coast community of Lund on Monday, reported The Canadian Press.
The vessel appeared to have been recently occupied, but the captain was missing, Coast Guard personnel confirmed, according to the report.
Then, the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria issued a distress signal and deployed several Coast Guard vessels and aircraft to search the area.
The crew on one of the vessels spotted someone in the water between Cortes and Hernando islands wearing a yellow lifejacket and rescued the man.
Without the yellow life-jacket, the department says it is "unlikely that responders would have been able to find the missing captain and save his life,” according to the CP posted on Yahoo! News.
The rescue crew then performed first aid while transporting him to emergency health services in Lund.
The captain had been in the water off the B.C. coast for four to five hours, according to the report. He is now recovering from “severe” hypothermia.
