One of those weird coincidences, I was there from the start. We saw the boat guy stalled in the river, drifting out. He got his motor going, then made the wrong decision in not turning back. With a 15-20kt westerly blowing, no ground swell, but with ebb current, riverflow and wind waves, head high standing waves in the river mouth, not the best day to go crabbing. His boat was going vertical over the waves, then I guess he lost power, went broadside to the waves, then over. Drifting out fast with the current.
My coast guard buddy was rigging up his kite, so he grabbed a stand up paddleboard and raced out, got to him probably within 10-15 minutes of the boat flipping. 2 kayakers also went out. Then another buddy grabbed a second paddleboard. Took them about an hour to paddle him in.
The official response was pretty impressive ... 3 fire trucks, 2 rcmp, 2 ambulances, 2 CCGA boats from Sooke, and I think 3 helicopters, one US CG, one Cdn, and one air ambulance. Though it turns out it was overkill, they were acting on incomplete info ... the 911 call was for a boat overturned, unknown # aboard, then a I think a second call wrongly reported 3 people in the water (counting the surfers). Good to know the resources are out there should things go bad!
Boater didn't have his lifejacket on, but he had one in the boat. He luckily grabbed it before capsizing. Without that, he'd have been a goner for sure. Some accidents are unavoidable, just plain bad luck. This isn't one of them ... a cascading series of bad decisions. Lucky no one got hurt -- especially any of the rescuers.
