Whether it's been a bad series of bad
luck, Lake Erie perch anglers preparing for one last hook-up with
fish or boaters a little too eager and thus failing to properly check
their equipment, rescuers recently have been busy off Lake and
Ashtabula counties.
In the past week both a good Samaritan
and the ever-vigilant Coast Guard have assisted boaters in distress.
Sept. 25 the Coast Guard's Station
Fairport Harbor went into action mode and assisted a pair of what the
agency politely refers to as “distressed boaters.”
If that weren't enough just one day
later the Station Fairport Harbor unit was again called out to
perform a rescue.
Then four days later Fairport Harbor's
Coast Guard counterparts in Ashtabula also came to the rescue of
boaters in need of saving.
Busy, busy, busy.
The first incident happened about
three miles north of the mouth of Grand River, which just happens to
be about the same location as one of the Central Basin's finest
perch-fishing grounds.
Anyway, a little before noon a boater
came upon the hapless pair whose vessel was taking on water, the
Coast Guard said.
Said boater then used his (or maybe it
was a her) marine-band radio to reach the Coast Guard's Buffalo-based
search-and-rescue controller who then used an advanced communications
system to get a fix on the 32-foot boat.
The Coast Guard redirected one of its
Detroit-based hilos that was performing a training mission off
Lorain.
Also put into action was Station
Fairport's 25-foot response boat and which arrived less than 10
minutes after the good Samaritan had made the initial call.
Staunching the leak so the endangered
boat's bilge system could keep up the Coast Guard vessel then towed
the craft to the nearby Mentor Lagoons Marina.
"The
rescue went very well with good communication among all
the people involved," said Petty Officer 2nd Class
Eric Riley, the small boat operator of the rescue boat.
"It was good to get out on a case where we had to
use most of our skill set.”
The one-day-later episode the station received a radio report from a recreational boater that two people were clinging to a partially submerged vessel.
In response, the Coast Guard again sent its response boat out into what had become some pretty choppy seas. Earlier in the morning Lake Erie's texture was silky smooth but by noon its waves had passed the four-foot mark and headed north to up to six feet.
Such wave height was too much for the distressed boat and its two elderly passengers. By the time the Coast Guard crew arrived the pleasure boat was completely submerged.
Worse, the Coast Guard reported that neither of the men were wearing life vests. Pulling the two men aboard the rescue vessel the Coast Guard then proceeded to work on keeping the submerged vessel from becoming an artificial reef.
This the crew managed to do. Back at the Coast Guard station the men – whose names the agency would not release – declined any medical assistance.
On Sept. 29 the Coast Guard unit at Station Ashtabula were on the scene in less than 20 minutes to a radio call that a boat was taking on water about two miles north of Ashtabula Harbor.
By 9:10 a.m. on a bright, pleasant Sunday morning a Coast Guard response boat managed to locate the vessel and its two occupants, hauling aboard the boaters.
The men rescued acted smartly and contacted us immediately upon realizing that they were in trouble," said Petty Officer 2nd Class William Campbell, a Station Ashtabula official..
"They made several smart decisions by contacting us immediately, wearing their life jackets, carrying a waterproof phone and vectoring us in with a visible object upon seeing our boat. They also personally realized an error and mentioned to me that they wish they had a marine band VHF-FM radio aboard their boat to assist in communicating with us easier without dropping a call."
The two men declined medical attention when they were brought back to shore. Their boat was salvaged at about noon, Campbell said as well.
Just one week earlier Eastlake residents and Lake Erie anglers, Fred and Zoe Haas, decided to do some fishing.
The one-day-later episode the station received a radio report from a recreational boater that two people were clinging to a partially submerged vessel.
In response, the Coast Guard again sent its response boat out into what had become some pretty choppy seas. Earlier in the morning Lake Erie's texture was silky smooth but by noon its waves had passed the four-foot mark and headed north to up to six feet.
Such wave height was too much for the distressed boat and its two elderly passengers. By the time the Coast Guard crew arrived the pleasure boat was completely submerged.
Worse, the Coast Guard reported that neither of the men were wearing life vests. Pulling the two men aboard the rescue vessel the Coast Guard then proceeded to work on keeping the submerged vessel from becoming an artificial reef.
This the crew managed to do. Back at the Coast Guard station the men – whose names the agency would not release – declined any medical assistance.
On Sept. 29 the Coast Guard unit at Station Ashtabula were on the scene in less than 20 minutes to a radio call that a boat was taking on water about two miles north of Ashtabula Harbor.
By 9:10 a.m. on a bright, pleasant Sunday morning a Coast Guard response boat managed to locate the vessel and its two occupants, hauling aboard the boaters.
The men rescued acted smartly and contacted us immediately upon realizing that they were in trouble," said Petty Officer 2nd Class William Campbell, a Station Ashtabula official..
"They made several smart decisions by contacting us immediately, wearing their life jackets, carrying a waterproof phone and vectoring us in with a visible object upon seeing our boat. They also personally realized an error and mentioned to me that they wish they had a marine band VHF-FM radio aboard their boat to assist in communicating with us easier without dropping a call."
The two men declined medical attention when they were brought back to shore. Their boat was salvaged at about noon, Campbell said as well.
Just one week earlier Eastlake residents and Lake Erie anglers, Fred and Zoe Haas, decided to do some fishing.
At some point
in the angling the Haas' heard the trio cry out in distress, their
boat taking on water.
Making a long
story short, Fred Haas used one of his lines to tie his smaller
vessel to the troubled larger one and proceeded to tow it back to
the Chagrin River.
Complicating
matters were that the line broke once and needed to be retied, the
trip back was about a five-mile run and the occupants of the
distressed vessel had to keep bailing all the while.
Finally, Zoe
Haas said, the linked boats made it back to the dock.
Haas also
declined an offer of money to compensate him for his actions or
expenses.
“Fred broke
the link between the boats, and ignored the fishermen's money which
they waved to him. He simply turned his boat around, sailed to a
tributary of the river, and disappeared,” Zoe Haas said.
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
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