Well that is kind of the point of the exercise isn't it?

The last several years I have taken part in a huge two day, multi-agency exercise/competition as part of the water rescue team portion. I have been a proctor for the rescue swimmer station, a competitor on the team, and this year I proctored the towing and search and rescue stations.

Day 1:

The search station involves plotting coordinates and the proper search pattern for the area given and to find and "mitigate" three different objects (mannequins as victims, barrels as hazmat containers etc). The designated search area was just a ways off of one end of the bridge. It had been joked about many times already that if we got a jumper this would turn into a real exercise.

Shouldn't have said anything.

We were just starting the exercise for the second crew of the day when the radio reported a jumper from our end of the bridge. We immediately abandoned the exercise and began to haul ass back towards the bridge.
On the way we could already see the smoke from the signal flare. When someone jumps from the bridge the bridge workers drive out to the location the person jumped from and toss a smoke bomb over the side. This gives us a good idea where to start the search and also shows drift and current. There wasn't a ton of current and the smoke wasn't going far.

As we headed towards the smoke we could see a couple of boats in the area that had stopped under the bridge. On the rear deck of one boat a woman stood pointing into the water several yards ahead of her.
We quickly spotted the object she was pointing too and made our way to it.

Now, I've been on a few searchers for jumpers and others lost at sea but I've never been on the boat that found them or made the recovery. At least not of anyone who wasn't alive. I've pulled cold and thankful victims of capsized boats out of the water, but never a body.

Approaching so the body was drifting towards us we could see that the person was face down...and shirtless. Not sure exactly how that happens or what the mechanics are. Wind as you fall from height? I really don't know. The waves were enough to make the approach somewhat difficult and we had to use the gaff to hook a belt loop and bring him close. One firefighter used the gaff and I laid down flat on the deck reaching down to hold on to the body so it didn't go under the boat. That's when I noticed that the victims arm was separating at the shoulder. Not quite deep enough to be severing but enough that I probably couldn't use it to pull him into the boat. Goes to show how strong an impact hitting water can be though.

 

As we were maneuvering the victim towards the back swim deck the coast guard vessel arrived. As they are much better equipped to handle the body and all follow up we were able to pass the body over to them for recovery. Which was just as well by me.

We were requested to search under the bridge a bit more to see if we could locate his jacket in the hopes of finding some identification.

 

As we continued our search we noticed two porpoises (maybe dolphins) approaching the boat from the ocean side of the bridge. They moved, side by side, jumping their way in unison along the surface of the water. They passed right along side our  boat and continued on into the bay. it was a beautiful sight and a very surreal moment; standing on the deck of some other agencies boat, some other agencies area of operation, having fished a tragic suicide out of the water, witnessing these animals as I've never seen them before, and simultaneously loving being out on the water doing this job.

 

We never did find the jacket and so returned to the search and rescue scenario to save a mannequin and a plastic barrel. It didn't quite have the same sense of urgency after the jumper though.

Day 2:

Our second long day out on the water started out much the same as the first with great weather and mostly calm seas. There was of course continued talk of yesterdays events and maybe this time we should talk about getting a boat fire or something else instead.

We were just starting the second group our station (again) when a report came in for an unconscious male in a dinghy in the next harbor up from where we were conducting our drill.

Here we go again.

We broke from the exercise and headed off hauling ass up to where the reported victim was. We had pretty limited information but received a report when we were almost on scene that the victim had been picked up by a passing boat. Shortly after that update we were flagged down by the crew of that boat. They told us that they had towed him in to the docks. I asked if he was talking and if he was okay. They told me "yeah he woke up".  Well that's not really a good enough answer for us so we still wanted to follow up and make sure everything was okay so we headed in to the docks. We still had only "white dinghy" as a description and there didn't appear to be any vessels of that description there. Fortunately there were some people at the docks who had seen the boat get towed in and told is it was down at the dinghy dock at the end of the next pier over. They also gave us a description of the boat.

As we turned the corner around that next pier we could see the boat floating loose by the shore. Even through binoculars the boat appeared empty but we couldn't be sure. So, we tied up at the dock and made our way ashore and around to the dinghy. Sure enough there he was. Completely passed out in the boat. The good samaritans had apparently taken him as far as the dock and said farewell. This guy never tied up or got out of the boat and just passed out again. He'd been out in the sun for quite some time and was shirtless. He looked exactly how you would expect a castaway to look. However he was just drunk and no Tom Hanks by any stretch.

 

The crew waded in to the water and got hold of his boat and pulled it up on shore. They then proceeded to perform a medical evaluation on our intoxicated and disoriented patient.

Upon finding our patient still in the boat we had radioed for the local fire agency to respond with fire and ambulance. The firefighter on the engine that responded turned out to be one of the guys on the boat that had picked up the jumper with me the day before.

We still had time to finish up the scenario and rescue the mannequin and the barrel and get back to the dock.

Waiting for the next contestants to arrive I wondered what else could possibly happen.