Father & Son Rescued off Ft. Bragg

When you’re sailing offshore in a small sailboat, the sight of an enormous commercial vessel passing close by might make you nervous. But in this case it was a godsend.

At roughly 8:30 a.m. yesterday, a crewman aboard the 774-ft container ship Horizon Enterprise observed an orange smoke flare roughly 24 miles off the northern California coast, west of Fort Bragg. Upon approach to the source, the ship’s crew observed a man aboard a 27-ft sailboat waving his arms and yelling for help. He was clearly in distress, but apparently had no means of radio communications.

Rescue resources were quickly put into play after Horizon Enterprise crewmen radioed the Coast Guard. At roughly 10 a.m. when a helicopter crew from Coast Guard Air Station Humboldt Bay arrived and dropped down a radio, it was learned that the 48-year-old sailor had fallen Monday night, badly injuring one leg, which had a prosthetic hip, and also rendering his radio inoperable. He was sailing from Eureka to San Francisco with his 13-year-old son. (Names have not yet been released.) 

When a 47-ft motor lifeboat from Coast Guard Station Noyo River arrived, the sailors were taken aboard, and a Guardsman was left to attend the drifting sailboat. As Lt. John Briggs explained to us, the primary mission of Coast Guard search and rescue personnel is to save lives, but they have the option to save property also, which they did in this case. A second 47-footer steamed out to the scene and towed the little sloop into port without further incident. 

Lessons learned? There are many, of course, but the most obvious is to always have multiple means of communication — especially when sailing offshore.