We’re not even into the busy boating season yet and already the folks over at U.S. Coast Guard Station New Haven are concerned for our safety, more so than usual.

“Far too often, my team and I must deliver the tragic news of boating fatalities to family and friends, those lost at sea or found deceased,” says U.S. Coast Guard Captain Eva J. Van Camp, the sector commander, captain of the port, and federal maritime security coordinator for U.S. Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound. “Regrettably, last year there was an overall 30 percent increase in recreational boating fatalities across the northeast from 2021 to 2022.”

Just a few weeks ago, she added, U.S. Coast Guard units in Maine were part of a search for four individuals, all of whom lost their lives “to the unforgiving cold water.”

“These cases have led me to be expressively proactive in communicating the importance of responsible boating,” says Van Camp, who organized a search and rescue demonstration in early May, featuring a four-member crew in an MH-60T Jayhawk helicopter training to do foul weather rescues in cold water with the support of another crew, including U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary members in a boat nearby.

Like Something Out Of The Movies

Watching a crew conduct a rescue while hovering in a Jayhawk helicopter with the white-topped waves heaving and the wind blowing every which way is like something out of a movie. In fact, remember Top Gun? The original, released in 1986. The fighter pilot Maverick, following a flameout in his F-14 Tomcat, starts yelling “Eject! Eject! Eject!” to Goose, his co-pilot and best friend. Maverick, desperation in his voice as the plane tumbles from the sky, yells, “Watch the canopy!” And then BAM, they eject. Goose slams up against the canopy and ends up bloodied and dead in the water, with a devastated Maverick, sobbing, cradling his best friend and co-pilot in his arms.

Next thing you know, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter is hovering overhead. Someone, likely an aviation survival technician, drops into the water, swims over, and with a “Sir, sir, let go of him, you gotta let him go, sir,” recovers the body and gets Maverick to safety.

U.S. Coast Guard Aviation Survival Technician First Class Derrian Duryea, originally from Ridgefield, Connecticut, and now a member of a Jayhawk crew from Air Station Cape Cod, remembers that movie as one of the reasons he was inspired to become a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. Since then, working with the support of his crew, he has distinguished himself many times. There was the time he and his crew helped lift five boaters, 70 miles off the coast, to safety. Another time, he and his crew completed a complicated and treacherous body recovery mission that involved Duryea plunging into the raging waters of Niagara Falls. He did this with the help of two pilots who held the Jayhawk steady while a fourth crew member operated the cable connecting him to the helicopter, continually communicating with the pilots, since they cannot see below the helicopter, to let them know what to do, where to go, and when, so that the team could complete the mission.

During the recent demonstration/training session in New Haven, the guy operating the hoist, working from the open door of the hovering Jayhawk, was U.S. Coast Guard Avionics Electronics Technician First Class Andrew Champagne, who recently received an award for potentially averting a deadly crash when he noticed an abnormal vibration while sitting in his seat as his crew’s helicopter was about to fly more than 100 miles away over a densely populated area to embark on a search and rescue mission. He called off the mission, and they then discovered a problem with a loose fuel tank fitting that could have created a catastrophe. Champagne knows the copters inside and out because he is part of the team that regularly tears them down, inspects them, and then rebuilds them. Sitting in the open door of the helicopter, guiding the rescue swimmer while communicating with the helicopter pilots is the other part of his job.

Rounding out the crew during the demonstration/training was U.S. Coast Guard Commander Ian Hurst, who was piloting the helicopter with Captain Frederik Taillefer, a Canadian pilot current on exchange at Air Station Cape Cod.

Watching this kind of rescue, whether during a demo session or in the movies, is an awesome sight. And it’s the kind of thing that Hurst, Taillefer, Champagne, and Duryea, along with the other members of the Coast Guard, hope you will only ever see in the movies.

How To Not Die

The point of the demonstration/training was to encourage all of us to boat safely and, this time of year, to give special consideration to the cold water, which is slowly warming up from about 40 degrees or so. If you have an accident and hit the water at those temperatures, it would be only a matter of minutes before you would get stupidly befuddled and lose dexterity, rendering your hands just about useless. And that assumes you survive the involuntary gasping that likely will occur if you are suddenly and unexpectedly immersed in cold water. Instead of air, you might inhale water.

If you do survive that, good luck. It’ll be about a half hour to an hour before you become exhausted and/or unconscious. By the end of the third hour, if you are not rescued by then, you might be dead, creating what would then be a catastrophic ending for you, your family, and friends following what you had hoped would be a fun day of boating.

How to avoid that? Here are some tips from the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.

First of all, if you are going to be out on the water, regardless of the time of year, take a safety class with the auxiliary. There are several coming up in both Clinton and Guilford, and you can find out about them here: https://www.cgaux.org/boatinged/class_finder/index.php.

What else?

And, says Duryea, keep a very close eye on the weather. Don’t just look at the sky and make a guess; check it with a reputable, reliable weather service before going out. He says to be particularly vigilant during the summer when late afternoon thunderstorms tend to pop up in Connecticut and nearby states.

Duryea also says to seriously consider investing in an EPIRB, Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. Yes, they are pricey, but they will take the “search” out of search and rescue when activated, by automatically transmitting a coded message to the distress frequency monitored by a satellite system. That message is then transmitted to an earth station and from there to the nearest rescue coordination center. That means, if you have to get rescued, your rescuers can find you much more easily. Also, after you invest in one of these, make sure you keep all your information up to date and registered, which will also assist in a rescue.

He also recommends that, if you have to, or really want to, go boating while the water is still cold, considering investing in what is known as a gumby suit, or a cold water immersion and survival suit that will keep you dry, staving off hypothermia for a bit longer.

That might seem like a lot, but it all will be priceless if it ends up saving your life or the life of the boater in your family. In the meantime, the men and women at the U.S. Coast Guard will keep on training, hoping to never see you unless it’s after a training demo.

“We train almost every day of the week, day and night, to be ready for whatever we might get as a call,” says Duryea. “So our area here out of Air Station Cape Cod, we cover all the way down to New York City and all the way up to the Canadian border up into Maine. So it’s a very big area for us. But, yeah, we are always training.”