Twenty-one passengers and three crew members had to disembark from a whale-watching boat after it started flooding off the west coast of Vancouver Island on Saturday. The 15-meter MV Chinook Princess, owned by Jamie’s Whaling Station, either struck a rock or came into contact with a sunken log near Turret Island in the Broken Group Islands, southeast of Ucluelet, at 11 a.m., director general Adam Doolittle said . “This contact resulted in a small leak in the rudder seal, which was successfully dealt with by the ship’s pumps,” Doolittle said. He said the crew assessed the damage and contacted the Canadian Coast Guard with a distress call. Steve Payne, of Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue Station 38 based in Ucluelet, said several vessels were involved in getting the passengers off the boat and safely ashore, including the RCMP, the Canadian Coast Guard’s Cape McKay from Bamfield and a Parks Canada rescue boat. The Canadian Coast Guard said there were several other “vessels of opportunity” that responded to the distress. Payne said the whale-watching boat was taking on water and disabled, but “the pumps were going.” There were no injuries and “the whole rescue went like clockwork,” he said. The Chinook Princess was towed into Ucluelet Harbor Saturday afternoon after passengers had been unloaded. Doolittle thanked everyone who helped rescue the passenger and crew and credited the crew’s safety training for preventing the situation from escalating. “These are precisely the situations that our crew often train for with our regular safety drills,” he said.
