Ranger Tug as a dive platform and recovery search vessel

South lake

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I'm a member of the US Freshwater Boaters Alliance or USFBA, a boating group devoted to encouraging boating safety and coming to the aid of other boaters in distress. We handle all non emergency 911 calls for assistance on our lake in western Ohio and are also dispatched along with local authorities for emergency calls.

On 5/27/2017 at 2:49am we received a call from the 911 Dispatch Center that a boater had jumped off a boat and was in the water. Male, 5'9", 48 years old, dark hooded sweatshirt, jeans, no life jacket. It quickly went from rescue to a recovery operation with boats from ODNR, two local fire departments and boats from the USFBA involved. For 3 days we were involved in providing perimeter security for the search area, pattern searches, ferrying personnel to and from boats involved in the search, and finally on my 2010 R25 the Get~Aweigh, acting as a deployment vessel for the dive team. Thought I'd attach a brief video of the Get~Aweigh in action retrieving a diver and returning the dive team to the command center.

The next day the victim's body surfaced and was recovered at 6:30am somewhat northeast of the search area.

Needless to say water and alcohol can be a deadly combination and life jackets are so important.

Here's the video: https://youtu.be/aNhCmArIJpI
 
Always a sad event doing a recovery. I did over 500 dives during my thirty plus years with the West Palm Beach Police Department in Florida. Way to many were this type of search as a result of driving into a canal, lake, pond or the inter coastal waterway.
 
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