Tiki Tours boat rescues jet-skiers in Halifax harbour
A bachelor party on a pontoon boat with Tiki Tours Halifax made a surprise rescue on the weekend.
The group of 11 from Ontario were about halfway through their tour, around 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon, when the boat came across two men in the water whose jet-skis were flipped over.
Stephen Jeddry, the captain of the boat and owner of the tour company, says they were trying to get the Sea-Doos upright again.
“They kept spinning them over, so we headed in that direction, and it looked like one of them was sinking. It was three quarters submerged,” says Jeddry.
But when they got one upright, it would fall back into the water.
They pulled the boat closer and dropped the ladder on the boat and got the men on board.
Most of the pontoon boat is open to the air, but the equipment storage room is warmer, and Jeddry says he gave the two some dry, warm clothes and blankets let them warm up in there.
“I remember the first guy when he got to the ladder. He had no energy left. I thought, ‘We’re going to have to pick him up and carry him on the boat.’ And he managed to get up the ladder on his own accord, but he had no gas left.”
They also told him their arms were exhausted after trying so hard to flip the jet skis, but the cold ocean water would have made it much worse, says Jeddry.
Cold ocean water still dangerous in May
Cold shock is what happens when someone is suddenly immersed in cold water. It makes it harder to move and breathe and can be fatal in minutes, according to the National Boating Safety School of Canada.
They say any water below 21 degrees can pose a risk, but a lot of Canada’s waterways are colder than that for most of the year.
Jeddry says sometimes people forget, but the Halifax harbour has frigid ocean temperatures. He estimates the water on Saturday was between 6 and 8 degrees.
“That’s not going to take long for your muscles to start shutting down,” says Jeddry.
Thankfully, he says, they were wearing life jackets, and they were not too far from the shore, in case they did have to try and swim.
But he says the situation could have gotten dangerous. When they found the two men in the water, they were west of George’s Island near Pier 21, not easily seen by the people walking along the waterfront.
Once the men were on board, Jeddry says his crewmate and the group of bachelors tied the jet skis to the side of the boat, and they brought them back to the dock.
They made sure the men were all right, now with warm clothes and on dry land, and the Tiki tour boat went back out to finish the bachelor party.
“When they get off, one guy said, ‘Wow, what a great story we got to tell, leaving Nova Scotia.’”
