Winter weather a hazard for outdoorsmen

Last week’s bone-chilling temperatures and blustery winds are by now a distant weather memory. But for many boaters in south Louisiana – particularly those who braved the weather to hunt ducks – the memory involves more than passing discomfort.

Rescuers were kept busy from dawn till well past dusk Saturday towing vessels stranded on suddenly-appearing mud flats after strong north winds pushed away the water and left boaters stranded.

The rescues included Coast Guard airlifts of six people including boaters who had tried to aid others with disabled vessels.

Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office Water Patrol deputies began answering calls from about 6 a.m. onward, mostly in areas near Pointe-aux-Chenes and Dularge, in some cases deploying an airboat. No injuries were reported in any of the incidents. But boaters suffered wind chills of 10 to 15 degrees, with winds clocking as high as 25 mph, according to official weather reports.

“Between the hours of 5:45 a.m. and 7:15 a.m. there were 10 people rescued by TPSO deputies by use of the airboat,” Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said. “During this same time TPSO received calls of two other stranded boaters who were rescued by someone from the public prior to the arrival of the TPSO water patrol deputies.”

Coast Guard watchstanders in New Orleans received a report at 2:35 p.m. Saturday from a private helicopter of a 17-foot johnboat with three people on board that was taking on water in the Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana. A Coast Guard helicopter responded, arriving at 3:46 p.m. By that time the boat’s on-board pump was working but the vessel still neded a tow.

The aircrew provided the boat with a radio, blankets and transported one person to Berwick Boat Landing in Berwick, then refueled in Patterson.

A little more than three hours later the Coast Guard was notified that the same boat had become grounded. A Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries rescue boat responded to give aid, but the water level was too low for the stricken vessel to be reached.

Two Good Samaritan vessels attempted to assist the johnboat and they became grounded. So the Coast Guard re-launched their MH-65 Dolphin. At 9:30 p.m. a total of six people from the grounded vessels were retrieved through multiple round trips. Those rescued were delivered them to Harry P. Williams Memorial Airport in Patterson, to be assessed by emergency medical services.

The problems in Terrebonne Parish had begun much earlier.

Capt. Mike Ledet was responding to his first call of a boater stranded in the Dularge area, whose boat had ceased to run, before dawn.

“This kind of cold weather rubber gaskets and other stuff gets brittle,” Ledet said. “He knew he had a stuck motor but he couldn’t see what the problem was until there was light. It was that his gas line got brittle and cracked.”

The call was canceled. But then Ledet was traveling elsewhere, to a report of four teens stuck on mudflat, also in the western part of the parish past Bayou Sauveur. Ledet said he did the best he could, but that normal routes he might travel to effect a rescue were unpassable due to the drop in water levels.

“We had north winds all morning at 20 to 25 mph pushing the water toward the Gulf,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Wagner, noting that although a low of 27 degrees was measured in Houma, the temperature could have been lower out on the marshes.

Ledet urged his rescue vessel through waters made perilously shallow by a north wind, knowing that people needing help were in sub-freezing temperatures with deadly wind chill potential.

“I got close as I could and when I couldn’t get there I walked the marsh,” Ledet said.

One of the passengers on that boat, 16-year-old Colby Punch, recalled initial plans for a fun morning of duck hunting. A home-schooled commercial fisherman who knows local waterways, he was familiar with the destination he and his three companions would take. They started out from Wilson’s Boat Launch in Dularge, and were traveling near Bayou Sauveur in an 18-foot boat with Hunter Griffin driving. Nathan Martinez and Bryce Dobson were also on board.

“We took off to get to the duck blind,” Punch said.”But he made a wrong turn and we ran onto the mud flat.”

The teen boaters did their best to get the boat moved to someplace where it could float, but the water was just too low. When they realized the effort was futile they worked on staying warm.

“We got in one big bundle and keep all our body heat together and got close to the bottom,” Punch said. “We stacked the decoys so we could block the wind. We talked about random stuff, and we tried to keep calm.”

When Ledet was close he was still too far. A line he tried tossing to the boat could not get close enough, and pockets of deep water kept him from getting any closer, even on foot.

The teens tried to hook the rescue rope with a fishing line, but the weight of it proved too much and the fishing line broke.

Ledet realized he would need additional help, and called for an airboat. The teens made a call as well, and a family member, Al Lirette, who owns his own airboat, was alerted.

The TPSO airboat was occupied on the eastern portion of Terrebonne, where air conditioner repair technician Hunter Marcel and his two passengers, Erik Akers and Sarah Fromenthal, were stuck on a mud flat in an 18-foot Gatortail.

The trio had set out for a hunt from Theo Chaisson’s Isle de jean Charles Marina on Island Road at around 5:30 a.m. His 5-year-old son had wanted to come, but Marcel said no because the weather was so cold. He later was glad for the decision.

“We had run out of water and went to let up the clutch and the clutch was frozen and kept us going further than we wanted to,” said Marcel, an experienced duck hunter who was surprised to find himself in an untenable situation. “This doesn’t usually happen to us. But a few minor issues and a weather change and it happens.”

Knowing that if he was stuck a lot of other people might be too, Marcel called for help right away, giving his location as two miles south of Island Road.

Deputies Carter Fontenot and Chris Guise responded but found, as Ledet had in Dularge, that normal rescue operations wouldn’t do.

They retrieved an air boat and after launching it skidded across mud flats back to the rescue site.

“It’s a colder ride on an airboat, the wind is faster, but Sheriff Larpenter gives us perfect gear and equipment and we made it through the weather with no problem,” said Fontenot, who like the other deputies wore a Stearns combination life jacket and coat.

On the 18-foot Gatortail , Marcel and his passengers stayed calm.

A parade of ducks crossed the marsh as the sun rose higher into the sky, rubbing salt into the wounds of an already non-productive season.

“We had tons flying by,” Marcel said. “They flew over us, mallards, good ducks. We could have shot on them. But then we had no way to retrieve them so why kill the bird needlessly? That would be a waste. We just talked about hunting, we pretended we were hunting, we shared jokes.”

They used a pop-up duck blind to ward off the wind, but the discomfort was still major.

No stranger to helping people in distress – Marcel and his business partner traveled with other men to Baton Rouge after the summer’s massive flooding to do repairs at no charge – he has no doubt that what goes around comes around. An investment in helping people had returned help for him when he needed it most.

After hours of waiting Marcel and his crew caught sight of Guise and Fontenot in the airboat, and knew the ordeal had ended.

“They were fantastic,” Marcel said. “They had a smile on their faces and no complaints. You could tell they really enjoy what they do.”

Marcel said the lesson he came away with was to travel with better lighting, which might have alerted him to unexpected change in depth.

“Knowing it was getting shallow I would have stayed in the main channels instead of cutting through the marsh,” said Marcel, who had a surly 5-year-old, his son, Fisher, to deal with when he got back to Houma.

Already cheated of a duck hunt, the boy was inconsolable when he learned – despite a patient explanation of the mishap – that his dad had returned with no ducks.

Was he mad?

“Yes, he was mad,” Marcel said, expressing confidence that one day the boy would understand. •

Winter Weather