In feat of endurance, swimming Coast Guardsman single-handedly saves 4 from sea

Source: Washington Post

A ‘monumental’ rescue: Coast Guardsman swims a mile in choppy seas to save four fishermen, one at a time

Morning Mix

By Fred Barbash July 22 at 4:45 AM

A Coast Guard spokesman called it “an amazing story,” a “monumental effort,” of the sort he’d never heard or seen before.

It started with an emergency call to the Coast Guard on marine radio at 1:40 a.m. Tuesday morning. The crew of the Jamie K, a 52-ft. fishing vessel, had run aground about 250 yards off Cape Blanco, Ore., lost power and was taking on water. The four fishermen on board were abandoning ship and and headed for their life boats.

That’s a routine call for the Coast Guard. They chopper over to the scene, lower a hoist and a swimmer and one by one, bring up those stranded in the water. But there was nothing routine about what happened next.

The Coast Goard MH-65 Dolphin helicopter took off from Coast Guard Station North Bend, about 60 miles north of Cape Blanco on the Pacific. It arrived at the scene fine, and began what seemed at first like a standard rescue, lowering Petty Officer 2nd Class Darren Harrity carefully into the water.

But then something went wrong and they couldn’t get the hoist back up. “A mechanical failure,” Chief Petty Officer David Mosley, a Coast Guard spokesman in Seattle told The Post.

“I think the pilot said, ‘Harrity, you’re going to be doing a lot of swimming tonight,” Harrity told KPTV. ... And he did.



The 52-foot commercial fishing vessel Jamie K sits aground near Cape Blanco, Ore., on July 21, 2015. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Air Station North Bend)

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/22/after-a-chopper-malfunction-a-coast-guardsman-swims-a-mile-on-his-own-to-rescue-four-fishermen/