Sailors Describe Harrowing Rescue of Five People After Charter Boat Sinks Off Vancouver Island
Brian Angus and Dorothy Stauffer were sailing from Vancouver to Saturna Island on Sunday afternoon when they spotted multiple people in the water, launching a desperate rescue effort that would save three lives but leave two others lost at sea.
Spotting People in the Water
The couple had been sailing for about an hour and a half outside the Active Pass area when Angus noticed people in the water off the starboard side.
“I looked to the starboard side and the right side and saw one person in the water and then two more,” Angus told Global News.
Stauffer initially looked around in disbelief, but soon realized she could see a total of five people in the water. The couple quickly lowered their sail and turned the boat around to help.
Calling for Help
Angus immediately issued a mayday warning, and the Victoria Coast Guard and Canadian Coast Guard responded at once. The Coast Guard then automatically called every boat in the area for assistance.
“We actually ended up having two BC Ferries, a number of RCMP vehicles, the Hullo Ferry … but there was no one near us. There was no one around,” Angus said.
With their backgrounds in the aviation industry, the couple knew they had to make quick decisions. Angus operated the boat while Stauffer guided him toward the people in the water. They determined that the three people they could see had the best chance of being rescued.
“We knew we couldn’t save two, the other two, without getting those people involved,” Angus said.
The Rescue
Stauffer circled the three survivors with her dinghy on a floating line about 50 feet behind them. She chose to go after the woman who was screaming the loudest and was closest, directing her to swim toward the line and the dinghy.
“I basically told her to swim toward the line and the dinghy, which she did, and she got to the dinghy and held on to the stern of the dinghy,” Stauffer said. After securing the woman, they turned back to reach the other two men.
The survivors were swimming face up, holding their arms in the water to stay afloat. One man had no clothing from the waist up, and none of them were wearing life jackets.
“That was the most worrying thing for me, but we kept circling around the two we could still see and they were holding on to the dinghy. I looked at the dinghy like a life preserver for them. There was no way we could have gotten them on board our boat in these seas,” Stauffer said.
It took nearly 20 minutes for all three people to hold on to the dinghy because they were suffering from hypothermia. By that time, a Coast Guard hovercraft had arrived on scene and asked the couple to drive their boat directly into the wind.
Coast Guard rescuers jumped into the water with lines attached to the hovercraft and pulled the two men from the water. The woman was taken aboard the hovercraft from the couple’s dinghy.
The Hardest Decision
Angus, who is trained as a pilot and has sailed all his life, acknowledged the agonizing reality that they couldn’t save everyone.
“Knowing that we had to leave two people behind is the hardest thing for me,” Angus said. “You can talk about training, how to get someone, a man, overboard, practicing things like that, but when that happens to you, it’s completely unexpected. You don’t know who the people are. You wonder if you’re doing the best and can only rely on training, what you’ve read and how your boat works.”
Stauffer, a trained flight attendant, credited her training for helping her stay focused. “I had to assess where we were and what the people around us were like. Then I had to adjust our positioning by telling Brian how to drive and by shouting commands to the people in the water so they would listen,” she said.
Four Presumed Drowned
Richmond RCMP confirmed that four men and two women remain missing and presumed drowned following the sinking of the charter boat. The search has transitioned to a recovery operation.
A fourth person was rescued by another individual. A 26-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman have since been released from hospital. A 33-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman remain in critical condition, according to RCMP.
Plea to Wear Life Jackets
The couple described the conditions on Sunday as severe and warned that only experienced boaters should have been out on the water.
“From a wind standpoint we’re working in nautical miles per hour; it was 15 to 16 knots, and from a sea state it was about a meter and a half to almost two meters west, so it was very choppy,” Angus said.
They urged anyone heading out on the water to wear a life jacket.
“We just have a simple message: When you go out on the water, wear your life jacket,” Stauffer said.
