Woman dead, man rescued after sailboat grounded in B.C. storm

A woman is dead and a 56-year-old man is recovering after a sailboat ran aground in the Gulf Islands during Monday's winter storm.

A woman is dead and a 56-year-old man is recovering from his injuries after their sailboat ran aground earlier this week during a winter storm off southern Vancouver Island.

Ayla Hudson, a spokesperson for the United States Coast Guard’s 13th District in Seattle, says the Canadian boaters made a mayday call over marine radio from U.S. waters east of Saturna Island, B.C., at around 7 p.m. Monday.

The sailboat captain told authorities their nine-metre vessel was disabled and drifting towards land amid snowy conditions and two-metre waves.

A rescue boat was launched from Bellingham, Wash., and a coast guard helicopter was dispatched from Port Angeles, Wash., to conduct a search for the hobbled vessel in the darkness.

As rescuers arrived on scene, the sailboat ran aground in the small Sucia Island Marine State Park, collapsing the vessel’s mast.

The helicopter crew lowered a rescue swimmer to the victims, first hoisting the captain into the nearby rescue boat.

A statement from the U.S. Coast Guard says the helicopter crew then located the woman in the water and directed the rescue boat to her location. She was unconscious when she was pulled from the water into the boat, where rescuers began emergency resuscitation efforts.

The unresponsive woman, whose age and identity were not confirmed by the coast guard, was then hoisted into the helicopter and flown to the PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham, where she was later pronounced dead, the coast guard said.

Rescuer injured

The sailboat captain was transported to Bellingham aboard the rescue boat and transferred to the care of paramedics who took him to the same Bellingham hospital for treatment.

One coast guard rescuer was treated for minor injuries at the hospital and released later that evening.

“We don’t know what exactly happened to the sailboat that it ended up not being able to get out of the weather,” Hudson said in an interview Wednesday.

“The only real recommendation we can continue to say, especially in this winter, is to keep an eye on the weather. There’s a lot of bad weather coming in for at least the next few days, and it’s February, so it’s going to be unpleasant weather.”

The coast guard spokesperson said it is not clear from the agency’s grainy, nighttime video of the rescue whether or not the victims were wearing life jackets at the time of the incident, but said having a VHF radio on board was instrumental in getting rescuers on scene.

“We were able to get out to them because they had the radio,” she said, reminding mariners not to rely on a single communication device, such as a cellphone, for emergency situations.

“Obviously, our condolences are to the family and friends of the woman who was lost,” Hudson said.