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TUKTOYAKTUK
A family of four and two dogs from Tuktoyaktuk were found stranded in a boat Friday night after being adrift without engine power for four days on the Arctic Ocean.

One of two Twin Otters prepares to take off from Inuvik Friday to assist in a search and rescue operation near Tuktoyaktuk. Two volunteers from the Canadian Air Search and Rescue Association were aboard the Twin Otter to be spotters. The hunters were spotted 139 km northwest of Tuktoyaktuk by a Hercules aircraft based in Winnipeg. The Twin Otters remained in the area to offer assistance.

Christian Cafiti, marine controller with the Canadian Coast Guard at the Joint Rescue Command Centre in Trenton, Ont., said that the family was located in an 18-foot motorboat late Friday night, 139 km northwest of Tuktoyaktuk.

During heavy fog, the crew of a Department of National Defence Hercules aircraft based in Winnipeg spotted the adrift boat and relayed its position to the Coast Guard Ship Eckaloo, which was dispatched from its position in Tuktoyaktuk, said Carol Launderville from the communications branch of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The family had been reported missing by a brother of one of the boaters. A call came into the Yellowknife RCMP detachment early Friday morning from Tuktoyaktuk. According to the report, the party hadn't been seen since Aug. 10 at a hunting camp on McKinley Bay, Launderville said.

Cafiti said the party was classified as "overdue" because some people in the hamlet had said the family was expected to return on Aug. 15. There was no travel plan left with friends or relatives of the family members, whose identities have not been released.

Cafiti said two of the boat's occupants were men in their 20s and they had successfully hunted some caribou on the trip. There were also two dogs aboard.

"There was quite an age difference and to our knowledge they were quite experienced outdoorsmen," he said. "I know they were hunters and had caribou meat."

Following the at-sea transfer of the family, the dogs and the motorboat to the Eckaloo, the family was attended to by the Coast Guard crew, which includes a rescue specialist with advanced first aid skills, Launderville said. The family was given warmth, food and drink while the Eckaloo sailed through the night back to Tuktoyaktuk, arriving early Saturday morning, she said.

Besides the Hercules aircraft and the Eckaloo, the Coast Guard icebreaker Louis St. Laurent and two Twin Otter search and rescue planes were involved in the effort to find the missing hunting party. The Hercules was dispatched for the operation just after Friday noon after some initial searches by two Twin Otters, which had been affiliated with Operation Nanook in Inuvik, Cafiti said. The Twin Otters were used to search the shore areas. However, the Herc had to be sent from Winnipeg to search farther out to sea. After the Hercules radioed the boat's coordinates to the Coast Guard, it returned to Winnipeg because it was running out of fuel. The Twin Otters stayed in the area until the rescue was complete.

Cafiti says the group could have taken better precautions.

"The boaters didn't have any communication instrument with them and it would have helped if they had either a satellite phone or a VHF radio or some kind of radio," said Cafiti. "One of the issues also was that there was no sail plan, so they didn't tell (anyone) when they were going back. When boaters make sail plans with a family member or the coast guard, and had they planned to be back on the 15th, the search could have begun on the 15th."

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