A Colwood man is heaping praise upon a whale-watching tour boat that came to the rescue when his kayak flipped a kilometre from shore.
Frank Hanaka set out in his kayak in the waters off Esquimalt Lagoon Monday night to pull in crab traps when he ran into trouble.
The 76-year-old fisherman had modified his kayak at home to have outriggers, which stabilize the vessel, but they fell off – and he fell in the water.
"Without this lifejacket it would have been game over," Hanaka told CTV News Tuesday. "I wouldn't have been eating the crabs, they would have been eating me."
Hanaka shouted for help, and his cries were heard from people on the shore who called authorities.
But it wasn't search and rescue who found him first – it was a boat full of people searching for whales.
"People had heard him begging for help, crying out. He was a mile off shore," said Rod King of Eagle Wing Tours.
Viewer photos show the heroic rescue as the boat pulled up to Hanaka's kayak and hoisted the now-hypothermic man to safety.
For Victoria's whale-watching fleet, it wasn't heroic – it was just life at sea.
"It's always sad when we have to stop a trip in the middle of it to go help somebody else out, but that's what we do on the water," said King.
Hanaka has fully recovered from the experience and vows to fix his kayak before he returns to the water.
