Last Sunday afternoon, a mid-coast Maine man took his skiff out to retrieve parts of his dock that had been washed away by a storm. Somehow, the skiff turned over, and he was thrown into the frigid water near Tenants Harbor. As it turns out, a Facebook posting that he had shared with friends, just to tell them what he was up to that afternoon, plus a missed check-in call with his wife, probably saved his life The rescue started when the man’s wife said he missed a check-in call at 4:15. She called him again and again, but her…

A volunteer crew from Northern Virginia rescued eight people after their 50-foot Carver sank in the Chesapeake last weekend. The eight people had huddled together in the 49-degree water while the all-volunteer Smith Point Sea Rescue crew and the U.S. Coast Guard searched for them. After the rescue, the Coast Guard said the three women and five men were “in states of mild to moderate hypothermia” but they all were released in stable condition after treatment by local EMS crews. The rescue started when someone on board the Nauti Dream, a 50-foot Carver, placed a 911 call on their cell…

Here’s something you don’t see very often: A fire department rescue boat sank during a training exercise in the Chesapeake and the crew had to be rescued themselves. All four people on board, who were wearing life jackets and survival suits, were back on duty that evening. The Anne Arundel County Fire Department says they don’t know why their boat sank. It was refloated a few days later. The problem started when Fire Department Boat #1, based in Shady Side, Maryland, started to take on water off Gibson Island and the crew had to abandon ship. The Coast Guard and…

Sascha Scheller is a lucky man. He fell off his fishing boat 40 miles off Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, recently, when he lost his footing while relieving himself. He had been fishing by himself. As he hit the water, he saw his boat going off without him. About two hours later, Scheller was saved by a father-and-son team, who also had been out fishing, found his empty boat, and were able to use GPS tracking to help figure out where Scheller might be. Andrew Sherman, 50, and his son, Jack, 21, are ardent fisherman. They’re from Roanoke, Virginia, but spend…

Three men were rescued from an uninhabited island in the South Pacific after searchers saw the giant SOS they had written on the beach. The men had been missing for three days after their 23-foot boat ran out of fuel and they drifted 118 miles from their intended destination in Micronesia east of the Philippines. The men set out from Pulawat Atoll and intended to go just 26 miles to Pulap Atoll. They ended up on tiny Pikelot Island, where they wrote the SOS in the sand that saved their lives. When the men didn’t arrive at Pulap, their families…