‘We’re sinking’: Juneau family’s fast actions saves lives at sea<\/a>]<\/p>\nWard said Ho worked full time as the skipper of Big Red all summer and had a good track record. It\u2019s his first season working with Dolphin. Ward said letting him go wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure the thing he hit was just underneath the water level. It\u2019s a terrifying nightmare for all of us if you boat around here is to run into something like that. Rocks and reefs that are sticking above the water, you can see. He didn\u2019t run into that,\u201d Ward said. \u201cOur boats only take a foot of water literally when they\u2019re fully going on step. There are no propellers down there, nothing you can rip off at the bottom, so whatever he hit was hard enough and placed in just the wrong spot so it sank a boat that really should not have sunk. Such things happen. The fact that they saved everybody has everything to do with him. That is the fantastic gesture of a good skipper.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other crewmember on board was naturalist Mike Clasby, who said he\u2019s worked with Ho a lot this season. Coming from the North Pass vicinity through Favorite Channel, the boat was returning to Auke Bay after a whale-watching trip.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a rock ledge off of Aaron Island and he hit that; a rock ledge coming off of Aaron Island that was underwater because of high tide,\u201d Clasby said.<\/p>\n
High tide was around 12:30 p.m. that day. U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Ryan Butler, Sector Juneau inspections division chief, said the water around that time was \u201cpretty calm.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe area where we believe they struck is marked as a shallow area on the chart,\u201d Butler said. The Coast Guard is conducting a preliminary investigation into the sinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring high tide, a lot of these rocks are underwater and during low tide, they\u2019re showing. At the time this occurred, there\u2019s a good possibility there were rocks just directly under the surface that you couldn\u2019t see with your eye, but the chart does show it\u2019s a low spot,\u201d Butler said.<\/p>\n
Butler said there is a day board \u2014 a marker \u2014 in the general area which indicates that \u201crocks are pretty much always under water, right below the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later in the day Sunday, after everyone was rescued and back on shore, Clasby said he and Ho had to write reports for the Coast Guard. They also had time to debrief.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me, \u2018I went around the day marker but I didn\u2019t swing wide enough around the corner. The captain is supposed to bring the boat back,\u2019\u201d Clasby said. \u201cHe was just shaking his head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clasby said the whole situation is very emotional. He called Ho \u201ca good guy\u201d with no malicious intent, but said Ho made an \u201cerror in judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just had that one unfortunate moment of a bad decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Clasby said he understands why Dolphin owner Doug Ward had to let Ho go.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause (Ho) knows it and because he did it and because the result could\u2019ve been very tragic and because we don\u2019t ever want that to happen again for anybody, Doug had to make that decision based on his good judgment as an owner. … Doug made the right decision,\u201d Clasby said.\u201dI don\u2019t think he had any choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Efforts by the Empire to reach Ho for comment were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
A Coast Guard inspection could result in a suspension or revocation of a license, a notice of warning, fines or nothing at all, Butler said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too early to tell, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still trying to find all the answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There were no serious injuries after a whale-watching boat sank near Juneau Sunday, but the captain of the boat was fired that same day. \u201cIt was a terrible decision to make. Kim\u2019s a good guy and it\u2019s my job to sometimes make terrible decisions,\u201d Dolphin Jet Boat Tours owner Doug Ward said in an interview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5486"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}