Three fishermen from New Brunswick had to take to a life raft when their boat began taking on water near North Cape, P.E.I. early Friday morning.
RCMP, Island EMS and the Tignish Fire Department were called but a fishing boat out of Skinners Pond, captained by Alden Gaudet, was able to pick up the three soon after they had abandoned ship about 11 kilometres off North Cape. None of them were injured.
Peter Augustine of Elsipogtog, N.B. is the captain of the herring boat that went down.
"One of my water intake hoses broke and the water was just coming in and I don't know, in about five minutes the water was up to four feet anyway, inside the engine room," he said.
"We waited until the boat was almost in the water and then we got in the life raft and we stayed there five minutes, 10 minutes, until we got on to another boat."
That's when Alden Gaudet and his P.E.I. crew came to the rescue.
"I was just heading out there looking for some herring like we always do," said Gaudet. "A New Brunswick boat came over our P.E.I. call channel and told us that there is a boat going down and there was three men in a life raft."
Gaudet does not consider himself a hero. He said he was just doing what anyone would have done in the same situation.
"When we got there the boat was still afloat. Then we hooked on to the rope for the life raft and pulled the men aboard our boat," Gaudet said. "When we got the men aboard the boat, their boat decided it was going to go down."
Augustine is thankful Gaudet and his P.E.I. crew were able to come to the rescue.
Augustine has been fishing since 1995 and has never had an incident like this.