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We got a call that a ham radio operator out of Texas overheard a mayday call
of a sailboat with a single person
onboard, disabled. It was about 120 miles
off of Ensenada. We didn't know exactly
what was disabled on him. So we launched out,
started searching for the vessel. Located it in a shipping lane.
We assessed the vessel's condition and started attempting to talk
to the master. We could
immediately see that the mast was damaged.
. The sails were torn and some of them were in the water. Looking at the
vessel, looking at his supplies, we deemed it was not.
He was not going to be survive that far offshore without any supplies and any
way of making way. So we
had to start trying to convince the man to evacuate his vessel, which he did not want
to do since it was him home. That took a while. We put the
rescue swimmer, Mike Linehan in the water, to swim over and help us communicate
with him and evaluate it and get him off there.
We did not want him to get in trouble and have to go out there at night and
when he may have became physically
disabled. He was still able to talk and
he was still able to stand up and
get into the basket. If he had been out there another ten hours that might have
stopped and would have made it a much more difficult and dangerous rescue.
Lt. Lumpkin and Jimmy Johnson hoisted him up through the rigging, the broken rigging and brought him
up into the plane. We recovered the rescue swimmer and flew
home back to the ramp here in San Diego where an ambulance was waiting.