Coast Guard pair's quick action leads to massive search, rescue of sailor

Coast Guard pair's quick action leads to massive search, rescue of sailor
By Maddie Hanna
Globe Correspondent / August 25, 2008

Most days, Chris Flaherty and Patrick Yetman clean boats at the Green Bay Coast Guard station in Wisconsin and baby-sit the radio, listening for calls of distress that don't often come.

But last Sunday, the 22-year-old best friends from South Boston answered a call that mattered: an empty sailboat adrift in Lake Michigan, the man who had steered it missing for hours.

The report began a rescue process that spanned seven hours, drew seven boats and two helicopters, and sent Flaherty and Yetman onto boats with night-vision goggles as crews cut different search patterns through the dark lake. After hours of circling, searching, and scanning came the second important call of the night, this one from a Coast Guard helicopter: "We have a survivor in the water."
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