At about 1:10 p.m. today, the Coast Guard received a call from a woman whose 29-year-old son had called her saying he was in distress while out on an aluminum boat at the mouth of the Eel River near Centerville Beach, according to Coast Guard Public Information Officer Kenneth Wiese. According to Weise, the mother was able to make contact with the Coast Guard while still on the phone with her son. She relayed the information about approximately where her son was to the U.S. Coast Guard which launched a rescue helicopter.
Wiese told us via phone, “We treated it as a capsized vessel with a person in the water, based off the report from his mother.” Unfortunately, he said, the Coast Guard and the mother lost contact with each other about 1:19 p.m.
According to FlightRadar, Coast Guard helicopter 6603 which had been refueling as it trained with crews near Noyo Harbor headed north. it took the copter between 40 to 50 minutes to traverse close to the mouth of the Eel River near Centerville Beach. They arrived on scene about 2:20 p.m. Wiese said that a Good Samaritan on the beach was able to direct the crew to where the man in the water was located. The man was near land and the helicopter landed on the beach and the crew accessed him from the land…