  High Res Photo A Coast Guard aircrew from Traverse City, Michigan is seen lowering a rescue swimmer onto Station Manistee’s 47-foot motor life boat (click on ‘High Res Photo” to view the boat). Coast Guard air and surface crews stand ready to respond to those in distress. Boaters can help these dedicated crews by calling for assistance at the first sign of trouble and providing an accurate position and foremost by donning life jackets. Recreational boats can rapidly sink as the following stories illustrate. Photos by Senior Chief Tom Rau (ret) Recreational boats can rapidly sink Posted September 18, 2004. Coast Guard Auxilarist, Jim Bradley, captain of the 50-foot tug Wilhelm Baum, homeport South Haven, once told me: ‘Boats are brought into this world for one reason- to find their way to the bottom.” Bradley spent many years as a professional diver in the marine environment, lending weight to his aphorism. He also pointed out how quickly boats go down especially recreational boats. Unless a person has experienced, first hand a sudden sinking, I suspect their conception of a doomed boat mirrors movies like Titanic where in it took the 46,000-ton behemoth nearly two hours to sink and in the movie it seemed even longer as human drama upstaged the sinking. That ain’t the way it happens in the real world of small boats. I’ve known recreational boats that sank in minutes and some seconds. The quickest plunge was told to me by a friend: His cousin while driving a Skater fast boat on Sandusky Bay, Ohio suddenly went airborne at night and was ejected off the boat. He hit the water, went under and quickly resurfaced, buoyed by his life jacket. He looked all around, no boat, gone, not a trace. I told the story to Coast Guard Station Ludington‘s executive officer, Joe Marion. He said, while running as first mate aboard a charter fishing boat on Lake Huron, he watched two fishermen approach off the starboard side in a 16-foot boat. A four-foot wave rolled over the stern, the bow shot skyward and within seconds sank, leaving the two fishermen floating in the lake. Neither were wearing life jackets. In another quick sinker story, Patrick Lafreniere, a deckhand on the Car Ferry Badger, watched a small outboard boat with two men aboard beating across Pere Marquette Lake in Ludington, Michigan. It was late November 1989 and the small lake, home port to the Badger, swirled in a white-crested wind-driven free-for-all. “I watched the boat crest a wave, then dip out of sight, then reappear then dip again, but it failed to reappear.” The boat flipped in a heartbeat and the two men aboard drowned. They were not wearing lifejackets. Some boaters are more fortunate. They can at least announce their plight by calling Mayday before the boat sinks. I once received a distress call over Channel 16 from a boater claiming he was going down. I asked for his position. He replied: “I can’t give one, I’m in the water,” end transmission. The caller had recently purchased a brand new 19-foot Thompson power boat and was beating out into Lake Michigan on his maiden voyage. Pounding into three-foot seas, the boat’s engine mounts had separated from the hull, creating a gash athwartships. Around four miles west of Manistee the operator throttled back and turned the stern into the seas to set up fishing lines to troll. Lake water poured through the gash and the boat sank in moments. Later the captain told me he quickly swam away from the 19-foot boat, fearing it would suck him under. Sound like the movies? Shortly after that case I responded to another “quick sinker” involving a16-foot boat that sank 3.3 nautical miles west of Manistee Harbor in 68 feet of water. The two men aboard were rescued by a nearby boater. “My brother and I were landing a fish. Suddenly the boat began filling with water,” said Frank Maddens, operator of the vessel. His brother, Jack Maddens, later told me that they were both standing near the stern trying to land the fish. “Just as we tossed our catch into the boat it began taking on water. There was nothing we could do. It went down fast,” said Maddens. In the brothers’ haste to pull the fish aboard, their combined weight dipped the stern below the surface. The Manistee News Advocate ran my story front page with the headline: “Big Fish Sinks Boat.” Chalk one up for the underdog. Here’s quick sinker story that found two males well prepared. (Oh, how I love these stories.) On September 11, 2003, two men aboard a 20-foot Patriot boat suddenly began taking on water while transiting Little Bay De Noc en route Escanaba. The owner, Zack Boudreau, told the Coast Guard the boat sank in 20 seconds and that he did not hit an underwater object. The owner did report water gushing up from the floor of the boat at the base of the pedestal seat. He believes a major catastrophic hull failure in that area caused the sinking. Both men aboard were wearing lifejackets. While in the water, Boudreau called the Coast Guard over Channel 16 with a hand held radio, and then fired off a flare, attracting the attention of several nearby boaters, who also heard the distress call over Channel 16 and came to the rescue. Nice story, sweet ending, squared-away boaters, if only…. Unfortunately, many boaters are unprepared to deal with a sudden water emersion and I wonder if many even give it a thought. I certainly do. It’s a preempt brief I automatically cycle through before getting underway on a small boat. Foremost, I wear a life jacket. I absolutely will not get underway on a small boat without one. Then I ask myself should I end up in the water do I have the means to attract attention such as with a whistle, mirror, and flares. Finally, do I have a strobe light (secured to by life vest with a lanyard) that will announce my presence to other boaters at night and even during day light. These seemingly small safety devices could produce huge life-saving dividends. What about you- how huge is your plan? If you boat smart, it’s king size. Group
Grand Haven | USCG
Office of Boating Safety
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