A Life Jacket Saved My Friend's Life

Photo By Pamela Doty | Blog Header Picture  

UNITED STATES

01.21.2022

Story by Pamela Doty 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Water Safety

Since I live in the Midwest, my saltwater fishing experiences are usually limited to annual summer vacations during half-day trips on chartered fishing boats. However, my spouse and I went saltwater fishing in November with a couple of friends for three days on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, along the North Edisto River, near Edisto Island, South Carolina (SC). Our friends live in SC and fish there regularly in their 18-foot-long Hancock Skiff. They are very experienced anglers, but they don’t usually fish in the winter when the water is cold. On our first day out fishing, one of my friends fell overboard into 59.5° F (15.3° C) waters and drifted away from the boat very quickly in a fast-moving outgoing tide. This could have easily ended in tragedy and I’m sharing our lessons learned in hopes to prevent others from drowning in a similar incident.

Long before going on this trip, I had encouraged my friends to buy some comfortable, suspender-style, inflatable life jackets. Fortunately, they had purchased a couple of automatic/manual inflatable life jackets, which can be inflated automatically when immersed in water, manually by pulling the cord, or manually by blowing into the inflation tube. Unfortunately, for approximately six months they had never taken their life jackets out of the packaging. I armed their life jackets by screwing in the CO2 cartridges that came with their life jackets and explained to my friends how they work. This installation was easy, but on other styles of inflatables, it’s important to read the manual to learn how to properly arm them. I also suggested they carry replacement CO2 cartridges and bobbins with them on their trips. They somewhat reluctantly put their life jackets on and quickly realized how comfortable they were to wear while fishing. They also soon found out how life jackets save lives.

We were anchored when one of my friends fell overboard, so the first thing her spouse did was get the anchor on board. I went to start the boat, but the engine cut-off switch (ECOS) wasn’t attached, so it wouldn’t start. I yelled to see who had the ECOS thinking someone still had it attached to them and hoping it wasn’t attached to my friend who fell overboard. Nobody knew where it was, so I looked in the storage compartment underneath where the ECOS attaches to the boat. I discovered that it had accidently been disconnected when the storage cabinet door was shut so it was in there. About the same time I got the ECOS reattached, my friend who had pulled up the anchor got there to start the boat.

That process probably went quicker than it seemed, and it was amazing to me how fast and far my friend that fell overboard had drifted away from the boat in the outgoing tide. Wearing a life jacket helped her to stay calm as she quickly floated away from the boat. At one point, she even proudly exclaimed “I saved my $100 fishing pole.” She was trying to swim towards the boat while holding onto her pole, but couldn’t make any headway with the strong outgoing tide current.

I know from my lifeguard training that when wearing clothes, it’s critical to swim with arm and leg movements underwater and that clothes don’t weigh you down in the water. Wet clothes only weigh you down when you’re swimming with above-the-water strokes or getting out of the water. Her layers of clothes and boots definitely helped insulate her from the cold water. Suddenly entering cold water usually causes people to drown in the first minute from hyperventilating, gasping, or panicking. Plus, in cold water you can lose your ability to swim in an average of ten minutes, especially if you’re not wearing a life jacket.

We circled the boat around to get her and fortunately drifted up against someone’s dock, which helped to stop the vessel from traveling farther. She quickly floated up against our port side and held on until we turned off the motor so she could climb back onboard. The boat hadn’t originally included a reboarding ladder, but my friends had manufactured a fold-up extension ladder that attaches to a nice platform that worked very well. After getting my friend back onboard, we fortunately had some extra dry clothes so she was able to get out of her wet ones and dry off, which allowed her to warm up.

Afterwards she thanked us for saving her life and we were all very grateful that she had worn her life jacket. Over the next few days, we discussed what helped to ensure this event didn’t end in disaster and what we could do better next time. Of course, wearing a life jacket was at the top of our list of things to do. Sadly, out of all the anglers we saw on the water those three days, we were the only people I saw wearing life jackets.

Another thing was to always make sure the ECOS stays attached to the vessel when shutting the compartment door below it, and of course, never keep the ECOS attached to a person on board after turning off the motor and while anchored. It took some time to pull up the anchor and my friends have a buoy that attaches to the end of the anchor line that allows for quicker release of the anchor, but they hadn’t brought it on this trip. That would have allowed us to release the anchor quicker and return to pull it up later.

The fold-up extension ladder and platform they had built for their boat was a life saver too! Everyone should try their ladders out to make sure they can use them. Surprisingly, I tried out the ladder on my pontoon boat last summer and I have some work to do to make that easier to use.

It would have been nice to have a readily available, rescue-rope throw bag or just a rope attached to any throwable device (i.e. flotation seat cushion etc.) to throw to her as soon as she fell overboard. That may have helped to keep her from drifting so far away. However, in this situation the outgoing tide was moving her away from the boat so fast it may have been difficult to reach her by throwing any type of rope. Plus, the throwable on their boat did not have a rope attached.

If my friend would have drowned while we were fishing it would have been devastating and we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy our delicious sea trout dinner. Hopefully the lessons we learned will provide you with some ideas that could potentially help you or someone you care about survive a similar incident.

• Date Taken: 01.21.2022
• Date Posted: 01.21.2022 15:56
• Story ID: 413241
• Location: US