Rescue in Estero Castro

In this week’s blog I was going to write about the Tábanos a huge biting fly, about visiting a church and getting a stainless steel thing made. But instead I’m going to tell you about an incident that happened to us as we were heading out of Estero Castro this morning.

We were motoring down the Estero enjoying a beautiful day and just about to tuck into the remnants of last-night’s pizza for lunch when a typical little island fishing boat/launch crossed our bow a little closer than the COLREGS would recommend but unorthodox maneuverers are not uncommon around here. However the launch swung hard to port and came straight at us. I went full astern and almost got us stopped but the launch hit us a metre or so back from the bow with a mighty thump. The impact broke our tiller off at the top of the shaft, we had the tiller pilot engaged so it was held tight at the time.

We could see a couple of people slumped over in the cabin of the boat; one raised a head to see what the thump was and collapsed again. I got Paula to get on the radio to Castro Radio and report an out of control boat with the crew probably suffering CO poisoning (it just seemed that was highly likely) and set too fitting the spare tiller.

We got the spare tiller fitted in about five minutes and set off in pursuit of the circling launch, Paula was shouting at the lady to get outside as she was lifting her head and looking at us but was unable to comprehend or respond. We were just getting alongside to attempt to lasso the boat when two guys from the Armada arrived in a zodiac. They were quickly alongside the casualty and one jumped aboard quickly emerging from the cabin with a small child and encouraging the barely conscious lady out into the fresh air. We were a couple of meters off the beam and I asked the Armada guys if they wanted help and they did! So we went alongside and jumped aboard.

The child responded to a couple of thumps on his chest and a couple of rescue breaths from one of the Armada guys and we put him in the recovery position. Paula encouraged the lady to breath in the fresh air but she wasn’t really with us. Myself and the senior Navy guy went into the cabin and lifted the man out (not easy it was a small cabin) and obviously full of CO as just the few moments that were in there had us feeling the effects a little. The poor chap might have a lump on the back of his head as I banged it on the door but that’s better than the alternative.  The man was well under the effects but showed some signs of recovery after getting some air but was in a bad way.

The Armada guys had sent Paula to call for more paramedic backup and we had also flagged down a small freighter that was passing and their first-aider came over with some oxygen ( well actually it turned out to be normal breathing air for fire-fighting BA but at least we had a mask to give some positive pressure).

We started an alongside tow to bring the launch into shore, where perhaps an ambulance could get by road, until the work-boat from the freighter could take over to manoeuvre the little raft of small craft through a mussel farm and a salmonera to the shore.

We were instructed to await instructions and got to work finishing of fitting the spare tiller and inspecting the damage. We were not too badly damaged; a fist sized dent in the bow and some bad scratches to the paint and the broken tiller.

One of the Armada’s fantastic Hamilton Jet Boat rescue boats had now arrived and sped off with the male casualty to take him to an ambulance in Castro and a larger 25-30m patrol boat had also arrived. They checked that we were OK and in typical South American fashion ordered (asked) us to go to Castro to make a “Voluntary” Declaration; which we had anticipated so got under way.

Almost back at Castro the Armada Zodiac caught us up to say thanks for helping them, but of course we had them to thank too as we would have struggled to have done anything in time to help the family by ourselves. They told us that the man was serious but stable (that phrase hey!) and that the woman and child were OK.

We reported to the Armada office, made our statement and gave them a copy of our logbook pages and an inspector came aboard to check that “Morgane” was OK to continue sailing. He chatted about his plans to buy a yacht with his son and issued us a certificate of good health for “Morgane” and we were free to leave.  We got intercepted by a reporter and photographer from Estrella de Chiloé as we left the Armada buildings and radio Chile is carrying the story too so we have used a couple of minutes of our 15-minutes of fame today.

Hopefully the family will not get into too much trouble with the Armada as it seems they didn’t have their boat registered or a Zarpe (a certificate giving permission to make a voyage); which you need for every voyage in Chile.

It’s beer o’clock!