A woman has died after a sailboat ran aground Monday afternoon on the rocky shores south of Courtenay.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority confirmed Monday night that two people — a man and a woman — were brought to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Comox. The woman died and the man is in stable condition.
One B.C. Ambulance unit was called to the scene and then a second ambulance was requested. The woman was alive when she was transported, B.C. Ambulance Service said.
The man and woman were found a distance from one another, between Royston and Union Bay, said Darren Morley, a coast guard officer with the Victoria Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre.
A 911 call to police was transferred to the rescue centre at 3:08 p.m. The call to police came from a passerby or someone in a nearby residence about a “a boat on the rocks,” Morley said. A Cormorant rescue helicopter was dispatched from Comox to search the scene.
“We had to keep searching the area from Comox to Union Bay until we confirmed only two people had been aboard,” Morley said. The conscious survivor apparently gave police that information, said the coast guard officer.
“We don’t know why this happened,” Morley said. “We’re curious ourselves why the boat got where it did.”
At the time of the incident, the wind was not particularly bad, he said.
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