Indian Arm is 20 kilometres long and a kilometre wide. That should be enough room for pleasure boaters to get around without crashing into each other - should be.
The Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue’s North Vancouver unit was called into action Sunday afternoon when the skippers of a 15-foot Boston whaler and a 15-foot bow rider collided between Raccoon Island and Twin Islands, about four kilometres northeast of Deep Cove.
By the time the rescuers arrived though, the two boats in question vamoosed. RCMSAR later tracked down the boaters through information from the distress call.
“We’re unable to confirm exactly who was at fault or how that came to be. But we do know they certainly collided at some rate of speed – enough to do some damages to the boats and throw the occupants around,” said RCMSAR coxswain Randy Strandt.
The result was bumps and bruises to the two adults and one child aboard one of the boats and, one adult and one child aboard the other, Strandt said.
Crashes between boats on the open water are “unusual,” Strandt said. Anyone going on the water should have taken a boater education course, he added.
“Someone had to be unaware or not paying attention to make that happen, for sure, or not following the proscribed rules of the road for the water,” he said.
