{"id":29738,"date":"2022-05-19T09:36:23","date_gmt":"2022-05-19T14:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/?post_type=survivor-stories&p=29738"},"modified":"2022-05-19T09:36:25","modified_gmt":"2022-05-19T14:36:25","slug":"resqlink-fog-swiftsure-fishing","status":"publish","type":"survivor-stories","link":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/survivor-stories\/resqlink-fog-swiftsure-fishing\/","title":{"rendered":"ResQLink Aids in Swift Recovery of Father and Son"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the Summer of 2019 we took a cruise in our sailboat out to Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver island.  A friend of mine and one of my sons powered a 20\u2019 boat that I had recently built out to Barkley Sound as well so that we could use it for longer distance day trips during our cruise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was an algae bloom going on in Barkley Sound while we were there so fishing was not as good as usual.\u00a0 My older son and I decided to take a fishing trip out to Swiftsure Bank \u2013 a shallow spot in the Pacific Ocean off the Northwest corner of Washington state.\u00a0 Since it was a bit of an adventurous trip I brought along my ACR ResQLink<\/a> rescue beacon as well as a handheld VHF. \u00a0We had a GPS chart plotter and depth sounder for navigation.\u00a0 As we approached Swiftsure Bank we were enveloped in a dense fog and \u00a0the waves became steeper and more confused in the shoaling waters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Paul and his son, Will<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We were going faster than we should have (trying to get in position to drop our lines before slack water) and the combination of a rough set of waves and a lapse in concentration lead to us flipping the boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The waters in this part of the world are very cold (12 deg C \/ 53 deg F in Summer) and Swiftsure Bank is remote so even without the fog we were clearly in trouble.  I dove back under the boat to retrieve the ResQLink and handheld VHF (luckily these were stowed securely enough that they were not lost in the capsize \u2013 if they had not been secure I would not be writing this).  I activated the ResQLink and then started to discuss our situation and our options with my son between bouts of serious shivering.  We went ahead an righted the boat but this meant spending more time in the water and the boat was partially swamped and unbailable when upright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within 10 minutes of deploying the beacon we heard the sound of an engine in the fog (the visibility was about 200m maximum).  I was amazed that we were being rescued so quickly and I started to get a tow line ready for the trip home.  The noise was from a ~20 foot outboard powered runabout and the were passing within 100m of us or so.  We could see their faces as we waved but they never saw us.  It was just a chance encounter and it was a terrible feeling to see them disappear back into the fog.  That was another lesson \u2013 being alert or not being alert when out in a boat can be the difference between life and death for someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I continued monitoring VHF \u00a0channel 16 and transmitting May Day calls every 10 minutes or so but nobody could hear us.\u00a0 That said, I could hear some VHF traffic and after an hour or so (hard to judge time) I was relieved to hear the Canadian Coast Guard station at Bamfield about 25 miles away making calls about a beacon signal near Swifture Bank.\u00a0 There were no responses to their calls that were close enough to provide assistance and no one was within transmitting range of our VHF.\u00a0 Luckily the Canadian Coast Guard must have sent a boat soon thereafter because within 2 hours or so later we were receiving calls from the rescue boat and they could hear us!\u00a0 \u00a0As they approached they had me countdown on the VHF so they could home in on our position.\u00a0 We were so cold by then that we could barely talk.\u00a0 It was a huge relief so see them appear out of the fog.\u00a0 Ten minutes later we were warming up in the cabin with our boat in tow behind us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Paul and Will Hiking<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I am pretty sure that there would have been a greater than 90% chance that my son and I would have died out there if we had not had the ResQLink beacon with us or had lost it during the accident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am pretty sure that there would have been a greater than 90% chance that my son and I would have died out there if we had not had the ResQLink beacon with us or had lost it during the accident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37381,"featured_media":29742,"template":"","survivor-category":[11,14],"terrain":[22,24],"survivor-event":[133],"survivor-cause":[126],"survivor-rescue":[137],"class_list":["post-29738","survivor-stories","type-survivor-stories","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","survivor-category-boating","survivor-category-fishing","terrain-ocean","terrain-river","survivor-event-rogue-wave","survivor-cause-weather","survivor-rescue-coast-guard"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-stories\/29738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-stories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/survivor-stories"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"survivor-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-category?post=29738"},{"taxonomy":"terrain","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/terrain?post=29738"},{"taxonomy":"survivor-event","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-event?post=29738"},{"taxonomy":"survivor-cause","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-cause?post=29738"},{"taxonomy":"survivor-rescue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-rescue?post=29738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}