Desperate father Scott Brown clung to a sinking boat in the darkness while holding fast to a three-year-old child, urgently keeping tabs on the Canadian Coast Guard with a hand-held radio.
The father, mother and their five children were all brought to safety Monday night by the crew of the coast guard hovercraft Siyay, which was first on the scene after the gillnetter Mindset ran into trouble off the northern tip of Galiano Island. The most harrowing part of the ordeal was holding on until rescuers could get there, hoping it wouldn’t be too late.
Mother Ursula Stephens told everyone to stay together and that they were going to live despite the waves that kept washing over them while they prayed for rescue.
“It was amazing none of us panicked, just prayed and prayed,” Stephens posted on her Facebook page. “I am still in shock that the Mindset stayed afloat to keep us all alive … I thank all our guardian angels for keeping us all safe.” And the coast guard and B.C. Ambulance staff as well, she said.
Two children aged three and nine did not have the body weight to survive the cold water, so she managed to put them on a bit of the roof that was still above water.
“I was trying to grasp at anything that would float, but every time I grasped for something, the wave would pull it from me.”
“We thought the boat was going to go completely down and we’d be just floating around,” 15-year-old Negaysha Brown told Global News. “It’d be the scariest thing if we had nothing to hold on to.”
“When the coast guard got us all on board we all hugged and shared our tears,” Stephens posted.
Two coast guard divers helped the family get on board the hovercraft.
All family members had mild to moderate hypothermia from struggling in the water, clinging to the part of the boat above water for about half an hour and were taken to waiting ambulances at the Sea Island Coast Guard Station, near Vancouver International Airport.
From there, they were taken to Richmond Hospital with “minor injuries, non-life threatening injuries,” said B.C. Ambulance Service spokeswoman Kelsie Carwithen. They have since been discharged.
But they’ll have to start from scratch as they lost their possessions in what was supposed to be a move from Surrey to Kelsey Bay on northern Vancouver Island.
The cause of the sinking has not been determined.
The vessels responding to the call for help included a pair of B.C. Ferries vessels — Spirit of Vancouver Island, which happened to be close to Galiano on its way to Tsawwassen, and Queen of Cowichan, called away from the Departure Bay-Horseshoe Bay route. Neither had to get involved.
“It ended up quite nicely that that coast guard vessel could get them out of the water,” said B.C. Ferries spokesman Darin Guenette. The ferries stayed in the area for about 45 minutes. “It was just prior to 9 by the time they stood them both down,” Guenette said.
Guenette said B.C. Ferries has 500 sailings a day, so there are always vessels that can be called on in an emergency.
“Eighteen to 20 times a year we assist with marine rescues, over the past couple of years.”
