Drift Boat Accident: When a Great Day Goes to Hell.

I’ve started to write (and then stop) this story a few times in my head since the early part of 2023. I guess I’ve just been waiting for the right time for me to feel good about it all, and to be able to share the story and the lessons learned from it. It’s never felt like the right time to do it, because sometimes sharing the events as they unfolded is not always…great. And even though this story I am about to unpack and lay out for you isn’t one of angling glory and massive fish caught and photographed, it is one that is worth sharing for a number of reasons. Primarily as a cautionary tale and also to put some things into perspective, but most importantly to shift the focus away from the event itself and reflect on the day as a whole. With that being said…here we go….

It’s February 2023, a glorious winter morning with great conditions for fishing on the Cowichan River here on Vancouver Island. The river height is at a very fishable level and color, with the weather forecast calling for overcast skies, light winds and a chance of a late day snowfall. At this time of the year I am normally targeting Trout and Steelhead in the river and it’s generally a productive trip with lots of Brown Trout, Rainbows, Cutthroat and if we are really lucky, a Steelhead. And although the temperatures are cool, it’s not uncomfortable to be on the river in the drift boat especially when you have a nice propane heater onboard to warm the hands and keep you toasty.

Onboard the boat is my good friend Paul, who I have fished with for many years since I moved to Vancouver Island from Banff, Alberta in 1998. Paul and I have shared too many fishing days together to count, and he’s been a mentor to me over the years as I have developed and honed my fly-fishing skills on the rivers. We’ve shared laughs, beers, great camping, and many a good time sat by a campfire somewhere in the bush. The kind of good friend where words are not always needed to affirm that both of us are enjoying each other’s company. A friend where no filters are needed. A brother.

Whenever I fish the Cowichan by boat, my choice is always to fish the upper section (the fly fishing only section) due to the abundance of fishy water, the fantastic trout holding capacity, and the fact that it’s a longer drift. Having fished it many times now I’m becoming more intimately familiar with where the fish hold, and how to convince them to come for a visit. Call it my home waters I guess, but I’ll admit that I have much more to learn before I would ever say I have mastered it. Just go for a drift with a local guide and you’ll soon get humbled with how much there is to still learn.

Our day on the river was progressing nicely by noon, with a few Rainbow trout played in the top quarter section of the river. Not quite our best day we’ve ever had but still a good morning. As we approached lunchtime the overcast clouds began gathering more ominously and it wasn’t long before a heavy snowfall began to settle down over the river valley, covering our boat and gear with a coating of big wet snowflakes.

Being on the river in a snowfall can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s absolutely amazing, serene and incredibly quiet as the snow drops and blankets the forest with a coating of crisp whiteness, adding much contrast to the green, browns and grays of the river. But it can also be quite cold, with the snow melting and sticking on your gear, your hands, and anything wet can quickly become icy. Rod guides ice over, reels stop working properly, and fingertips get mighty cold. I’ve tried fly fishing with numerous types of gloves and I’ve never found it feasible for me as I need that tactile sensation of the line in my hands. So as the snow got heavier and heavier and the wind started to pick up both Paul and I were started to feel the chill even with the luxury of a heater on board.

Knowing that there was a possibility of snow, and also hearing from some guide friends that there were some new obstacles on the river I had made sure to throw my chainsaw and some fuel in the boat. It takes up a bit of space but it’s a nice option to have it onboard in case there is an obstacle we cannot pass. My boat is a Clackacraft, made of fiberglass and it’s no lightweight like a raft. Dragging it around an obstacle on a gravel bar would be possible but it certainly wouldn’t be fun! But as we approached the halfway point in our drift we hadn’t run across any obstacles that were impeding our trip.

The upper Cowichan River is split into two zones – one being the fly fishing only and a section lower down where gear can be used as well. The boundary line is easy to determine, as it is marked by an old railroad trestle where normally I pull the boat out and take a break to set up any gear rods I may have packed along. On this particular day neither Paul nor I had brought any level wind or center pins, but we did pull in for a break. It’s a good area to have lunch, light a bonfire to warm up, and get ready for the last part of the day.

Given that Paul and I are primarily fly fisherman, we spent more time on the fly-fishing section and took our time, casting and mending into all the spots where we figured a hungry fish would be holding. Quite often we will spend three quarters of our day in the upper section and then simply push through the gear section to get to the takeout, fishing only a few spots on the way down. By the time we pulled to the shoreline the snow was falling pretty hard at the boundary, and after a roaring campfire and some warming up we piled back into the boat at around 2:00pm. Little did we know that our day was about to change dramatically.

Now normally, I row the boat. Not because I am a control freak or that I don’t enjoy being the passenger, but because I am most comfortable on the sticks and I know the river and the obstacles. I have enough experience behind the oars to know how to correctly maneuver the boat and stay away from danger. But the downside is that the person who rows gets to fish the least, by a long margin. Knowing this all too well, Paul suggested that for the lower section of the river he could row and I could fish, and give him whatever directions he needed to keep our boat the right way up. Wanting to target Brown trout on this section of the river I hopped into the bow, and Paul took us into the current.

As we drifted under the old railroad trestle and into the gear zone of the river, I was having fun casting and stripping streamers into deep pockets along the banks where the Browns would be hiding. Within no time at all my efforts produced 3 hits and two landed, and I was pretty happy to be riding in the bow, landing fish, and having a great final stretch of fishing. With a few fish under my belt, we headed further down into a slower section that would then take us to a split in the river where the current picks up and sweeps us down around a bend.

As we approached the split I turned to Paul to give him directions. “Ok so here you need to make a decision, right or left of that island. Personally, I would take the left side, but be careful. You have to commit once we start so whatever you do, don’t stop rowing. Keep momentum going!”. Feeling confident in his abilities to take us through this fairly easy stretch, I turned back around to face forward and keep casting.

I’m going to pause here for a second and set the scene. Picture if you will a fast riffle that pushes you into a deep eddy, that then spills into a shallow riffle that you need to navigate either right or left, depending on what side of the island you want to float past. About 100m downstream is a sweeping left-hand bend, with a root ball mid river that also needs to be avoided. At the downstream side of the initial eddy there is a fair-sized log that juts out perpendicular over the river about a foot and a half above the water and roughly 20 feet or so across. And it’s now snowing harder.

As we made our way into the run and hit the eddy, I was instantly aware that we had suddenly stopped moving forward but were still being pulled downriver, which was not a good sign. I turned around to check on Paul and saw him sitting still, not rowing, and looking downstream. Immediately I yelled out “Paul for gods sake man ROW!! We are going to be pushed into that damn tree!”

No sooner had I gotten the words out Paul snapped out of his trance and dipped the oars in. But it was too late. This is where the story gets interesting. Within what felt like an instant, the downstream side of the drift boat came in contact with that damn overhanging log. It took only a second for the upstream side gunnel to dip into the river and immediately flood the boat to the top of the gunnels. Mayhem ensued shortly thereafter.

Gear began floating and exiting the boat. Paul yelled at me “What do we do!?!”

All I could think about was us being flipped over and trapped under the boat, jammed against either the river bottom, the shoreline, or that damn root ball downstream from us.

“Get out of the boat, we gotta swim for it” I yelled!

And just like that we both bailed/rolled out of the boat and into the frigid cold river.

Immediately my lifejacket auto inflated and I felt like I was being suffocated by the tight squeeze and restriction of movement it placed on me. I looked over and saw Paul drifting half submerged, arms flailing and struggling in the water as we were being swept down river. Unlike mine, Paul’s lifejacket was not the auto inflating kind, and needed to be manually inflated by pulling on the rip cord. I watched in horror as the drift boat passed us, completely full of water now with just an inch or less of water line, oars tilted to the sky, and heading down river.

“Paul swim for the bank!!” I shouted, not knowing if he could even hear me. I quickly looked down and could see that the river had shallowed up a bit and I could now touch the bottom so I half swam half struggled over to the far side of the river bank and out of the current, dragging my soaking wet self onto the shore. I then looked over and then saw Paul now on his hands and knees, still in the water, about 100 feet downstream from me. Not moving.

I should preface my next comment with the fact that Paul is about 12 years older than me, and had suffered a pretty serious heart attack not that many years ago. I was seriously worried that the shock of the cold water or the event itself could cause another one!

“Paul, are you OK!?” I yelled, while splashing and stumbling downstream to him, still not quite over the shock of the unexpected cold plunge.

“Yes, just catching my breath, had trouble finding the inflator tab”, and then, “I am so sorry man”.

I went over to my friend and we both made our way to dry land. With our adrenaline pumping, we covered a distance of about 100 feet upstream to a large gravel bar where we both caught our breath and took stock of what had just happened. Both soaked. Both in shock. Both now without a boat. And the snow hadn’t let up.

At this point in the day, we had now hit about 3:30pm. In the winter this means that darkness is only about an hour and a half away. And to make things worse we were at a part of the river that would be difficult to walk out of even if we were dry. Plus, we were on the completely wrong side of the river to boot. To make things even more dire we were one of only two boats on the river on this day. And we had nothing to start a fire with to warm up and all the wood and tinder around us was either wet or frozen, and not a stitch of dry clothing between us.  As we stood dripping wet on the gravel bank, I remembered that we had actually passed the other drift boat about an hour earlier. That boat was my friend and fellow guide Alex West (www.steelheadfishingvancouverisland.com) who was guiding two guests in his raft.

I turned to Paul and said “Alex should be coming downstream soon, hopefully he can take us out or at least drop us off somewhere we can walk out”. In my mind I knew that we were going to be in some potentially big trouble if Alex didn’t come by because both of us would be highly likely to develop hypothermia and that was something which was a very real possibility.

I took off my lifejacket and tried to calm myself down. I suffer from chronic anxiety in my day to day life, and that kicked into overdrive. “Paul, I’m having a panic attack, I’m not going to lie I am kinda freaking out over here”. At this point I got my cellphone out of the ziplock bag I had it in and tried calling 911. I figured if I could reach them that perhaps the Cowichan River Rescue Team would be activated and potentially come and help. Given our geographic location on the river I wasn’t able to get a signal that was strong enough for a much of a call but I was able to give a quick message to the RCMP that we had capsized on the Cowichan River. But that was about it. No help was coming because I wasn’t able to complete the call.

Paul came over and put his arm around me and said something about Alex not being able to miss us, and so I took some deep breaths to calm down. About twenty long minutes later sure enough there was Alex’s blue raft coming down the river and I frantically starting yelling and waving my bright yellow inflated lifejacket to draw attention to us. He brought his boat over to the bank, nudging his raft up against the gravel bar and dropped his anchor. “What the hell man, what happened? Where’s the boat”?

“We hit a log broadside and got swamped bud, the boat is gone. Somewhere down the river. All of our shit is gone too. Rods, bags, everything. Do you think you can take us down stream to the takeout”?

“Yeah for sure, but it’s going to be tricky with 5 guys in the raft. I won’t have much steering and it will be a slow drift. But let’s try. Your boat won’t go too far, it can’t make it past that big sweeper downriver. Hopefully we will be able to get it sorted and you can row out” Alex said.

We climbed aboard. Me in the bow, Paul in the stern with Alex and his two guests sandwiched between us. We figured we had at least 3-4km or more of river to make it down before the take out, and fishing wouldn’t be possible now for his guests due to the added weight and cramped quarters. I felt really bad about that, but also tremendously relieved Alex was able to take us down.

Soon we came across my boat, now resting upside down and submerged in a deep corner pool adjacent to a log jam, just before a section where a big log had fallen into the river earlier in the year. If you know the river at all, this spot is known by anglers as “The S Bends”. I knew that the boat wouldn’t have made it past here, but I had visions of it smashed up and crushed. But as it happened it wasn’t. Alex pulled up on the gravel beach adjacent to the boat and we all got out to see how bad it was. I could see that the anchor line had fallen out of the boat and been pulled by the strong current directly downstream from the boat, reaching a place where I could bend down and grab it from under the water. Three of us then started pulling on the anchor line, and managed to drag the fully submerged and upside-down boat closer to the shore. There was no way in hell we would be able to flip it or retrieve it on this day, but at least now it was accessible for another time to attempt a rescue. Plus it was out of the deep section and tied to a large log nearby, so anyone coming down river would realize that it was not abandoned, and therefor hopefully leave it alone.

As we dragged the boat up, I then spotted one of my rods submerged in the river but too deep for me to try to retrieve. Like the anchor line before, the main line had spooled out and was extended some 100 feet down the river, to where I could actually grab the tippet and only got half of my arm wet (again). I picked up the line and carefully started pulling it in, being gentle to avoid pulling more line out. I was able to get the rod close enough to me to grab and was happy that I had at least salvaged one of my three rods. But there were many other things missing and presumed lost forever. My heart was heavy at seeing my beloved boat underwater and some of my favourite fishing rods lost. Not seeing anything else of value floating or washed up, I bid goodbye to the boat and we piled back onto Alex’s raft. Seeing the boat upside down I really hadn’t much hope that it would be recovered in one piece, and I could see on the bottom of the hull where the boat (full of water and extremely heavy) had ground along the river bottom, causing to serious looking damage to the chines. It was a sad sight.

As we limped along and the adrenaline started to melt away, I stood at the bow of the boat and I was becoming increasingly more and more cold. The snow was still falling heavily and a nasty upstream breeze was blowing, chilling me to the bone to the point where I was really getting concerned. “Alex man I am freezing, do you have any extra clothing I could borrow until we get to the takeout?”

“All I have is an old shitty puffer coat, but you are welcome to it”. It didn’t take me much convincing to remove my soaking wet down jacket and don Alex’s gloriously dry one! It immediately felt better. But I was concerned about Paul, who had been quiet for some time. One thing I know from taking my Marine First Aid and Rescue courses is to be aware of the signs of shock, so I was intent on keeping a good eye on my friend.

“Paul buddy, you ok? Are you warm enough man?”

“Oh, I am fine, I have wool pants on underneath my waders so I am good. Not cold at the moment”. I wasn’t convinced, as I could see Paul was getting a bit sluggish and too quiet. But we only had a few kilometers to go, so I just kept checking in with him as we continued our slow voyage to the end.

As we started to get closer to the takeout, I was worried that the weight of five guys in a three man raft might be a tough go for Alex to be able to safely maneuver to the takeout in faster water. I knew there was a gravel beach on a slow bend just before the final stretch where Alex could easily drop us off and then Paul and I could walk the rest of the way out. Alex agreed and so when we got to that corner Alex beached the raft and Paul and I hopped out and started to walk the last 300 meters or so out.

At this point Paul started shivering. A lot. Not a bad thing but definitely a progression along the road to hypothermia. If he had already been shivering for some time and had now stopped, that would be worse. While I was cold, I had the dry jacket so for me it wasn’t that bad. I turned to Paul and said “Ok when we get to the takeout and my truck, I’m going to start it up and crank the heat. You sit in there and let me help Alex with taking out his raft”. There was no argument raised. We chatted a bit along the trail and I soon had him in the truck with heat set on maximum.

Alex and his guests arrived soon after, and I went down to help out. Feeling terrible that I had ruined the last part of his guests fishing trip I offered to compensate them for it, to which they graciously said that they were fine with the day as it was and thankful that we were ok. Still, I felt really bad but also incredibly thankful. What had started out as a great day on the river had ended up a disaster. The silver lining of course was that we had survived the ordeal and were soon to be heading to warm showers and hot food. As sad and as disappointed as both Paul and I were with the outcome of the day and loss of boat and gear, we knew we were both very lucky in that nobody had been injured or worse.

With Alex all sorted, I hopped in the now very warm truck and started our drive back to Lake Cowichan. It was a very quiet drive and I had to concentrate as the highway was now slick with ice and snow and I was towing the empty drift boat trailer behind us. Paul said sorry a bunch of times, and I said “hey it was an accident and thank god we didn’t drown or get hypothermia”. Both of us were exhausted from the day’s events, and after I dropped Paul off at his place I hauled my ominously empty boat trailer back to a friend’s place and asked to stay the night. The snow had coated the roads pretty heavily and I wasn’t keen to drive another hour and a half back home towing a light trailer on bad road conditions at night. If the day hadn’t ended the way it did, it would have been a beautiful snowy day out on the river. But as I flopped down onto my friends Pam and Bruce’s couch, I knew that tonight I wasn’t going to get much sleep. I did have the presence of mind to call the RCMP and let them know all parties were safe so at least that was closed off. But I had to figure out what to do next and how to recover what was left of my boat from the river. But that’s another story for another post.

In closing this post off I want to emphasize one key thing from this trip. Paul and I are not consistent with wearing our life jackets on the river but thank goodness we both had them on for this particular drift. I am the worst offender in fact. I always bring one, but rarely wear it all day. Having been part of this misadventure I can tell you with 100% certainty that I will be wearing one religiously now.

WEAR YOUR LIFEJACKETS PEOPLE. IT MAY JUST SAVE YOUR LIFE.

Stay tuned for Part 2 – The Recovery (coming soon!)