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Coast Guard provides insight on rescue near Brookings

Christopher Hinote says he watched the video and thought the rescue was great.

DEPOE BAY, Ore. -- In Depoe Bay, the head of the Coast Guard station said he is good friends with the leader of the station in Brookings, where a trapped boater was rescued on Wednesday.

Video of the rescue shows that at one point, a group of good Samaritans lined up and pulled on a rope to bring the boat closer to shore.

Watch: Good Samaritans help rescue man trapped in capsized boat

Christopher Hinote says he watched the video and thought the rescue was great. He said the water was too shallow for the Coast Guard rescue boat to get next to the overturned boat.

“How shallow that is, our boats can’t get in to that shallow water. And so there was really no other means for them to get to the boat and that boat was probably in three to four feet of water. And our boats need at least four feet of water just to operate,” he said.

That’s why you saw rescuers in dry suits wading out, attaching a rope and hauling the boat closer to land.

“Getting the boat closer so you can work with more land. I think in one of the videos you can see one of the Coast Guard members fall down just trying to get everything hooked up. And that just shows you right there. He had all the proper gear on and was still having a hard time getting the boat hooked up to pull it back to shore,” Hinote said.

The effort worked. The man who was trapped, stuck for at least 45 minutes, survived.

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