Towing a Distressed Swimmer in Boat Related River Rescues

Video Transcript

"Now when towing someone who is calm, cool and collected, it is pretty easy and you can get them to work with you. It is quite possible that you are going to come upon someone who is extremely distressed, scared or unhelpful. In this case, you are going to have to be a lot more careful about how you approach them and how you deal with them. Typically when dealing with these sort of people and these sort of swimmers I like to approach them head on and present them with my bow. This way I know exactly what they are doing at all times. If they are on the back, it is going to be harder for me to see them. Again, with these people you don't want to approach them right away and suddenly present your boat because it is going to be easy for them to do exactly what they want to do which is just climb up on top of the boat and try and flip you. When you do come into contact with these swimmers, it is important to back off a little bit and calm them down. If they are really trying to climb up the boat, back away a little bit. Okay, that's it, that's it. I want you to grab, calmly, calmly, wrap your legs around the boat, come up and this way I am able to make eye contact with them the whole time. Because they are on the bow of the boat, I wouldn't be able to run down through things forward but I may have to be prepared to back up down through anything to protect this swimmer. "