It was mid-summer and I was at my yacht club, the North Channel Yacht Club, when we got a mayday call over the radio. A 40ft sailboat had hit a reef off an island and was sinking about five miles out. We threw some SCUBA gear and a pump hose into a 15ft aluminum fishing boat and made it to him in 40 minutes.
He was listing and there was about 1.5 feet over water over the floorboards. My partner and I threw our hoses in to start pumping him out, and I got into the SCUBA gear and went under the boat. There was about a half-inch crack in the side of the keel and water was pouring in. He was going down.
The boater and I tried to stuff the crack with shredded kitchen rags, and managed to fill 80% of the hole. We pumped out the boat and it came back up, and towed him back to the yacht club. We managed to seal the hole 100% with some weld epoxy and sent the two boaters and their two dogs back on their way. They're from Michigan and were back there within a couple of days.
If the coast-guard hadn't hailed us at the yacht club with the mayday call, he wouldn't have made it. It was a brand new boat, too.
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As of 2024, the Great Lakes Guide will be transitioning to Biinaagami.org. Biinaagami is a multimedia, change-provoking initiative rooted in Indigenous knowledge aiming to uplift voices and to connect people with their watershed.
