Boat-Towing Captains from FL, CT, CA Honored for Lifesaving Acts

(L to R) BoatUS CEO Kirk La; Meritorious Award recipient Capt. Mike Del Grande, TowBoatUS Long Beach, Calif. (credit: BoatUS)

When recreational boaters are in grave trouble, the captains of the on-water recreational boat-towing service, TowBoatUS, don’t hesitate to act. Six captains who acted as good Samaritans to save lives in 2018 were recently honored by their peers at a ceremony held at the annual BoatUS Towing Conference in Arlington, Virginia, on Jan. 17.

The captains serve TowBoatUS towing locations in South Dade, Florida; Tarpon Springs, Florida; Mystic, Connecticut; Long Beach, California; and Lake Havasu, California. These are their actions:

Woody Pollack Lifesaving Award

• Capt. Lee Hartman, TowBoatUS South Dade, Florida: A man aboard a 40-foot motor vessel tied up to a marina fuel dock had a heart attack and fell overboard into alligator-infested waters – but no one saw it happen. Only a loud bang followed by a splash gave an eerie feeling to Capt. Hartman who, in a frantic yet systematic search, was able to locate and pull the man out from under the motor vessel’s transom, where his body had been pinned underwater against the boat’s propellers and rudder by an outgoing tide. With assistance from bystanders, the man was removed from the water and rushed to the hospital where he spent a week recovering. 

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Boat Owners Association of The United States: “Pay Our Coast Guard” - and so say all of us!

BoatUS is supporting legislation to pay members of the U.S. Coast Guard during the partial government shutdown.

With the federal government shutdown now in its fourth week, Boat Owners Association of The United States (BoatUS) is supporting bipartisan legislation to immediately restore pay for U.S. Coast Guard members. S. 21, “Pay Our Coast Guard Act,” recently introduced in the Senate by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), and its companion bill, H.R. 367, “Pay Our Coast Guard Parity Act of 2019,” introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), aims to restore paychecks to the more than 40,000 active duty U.S. Coast Guard service members.

BoatUS is urging recreational boaters to ask their members of Congress for support of S.21 and H.R. 367 and offers a simple way to do that by going to: https://bit.ly/2AMDbJy.

In a January 15 letter to Sen. Thune and Rep. DeFazio, Vice President of BoatUS Government Affairs Chris Edmonston wrote, “While we understand the current debate over funding of the Department of Homeland Security is primarily about issues not directly related to the U.S. Coast Guard, we are concerned over the potential deterioration of its ability to fulfill its wide range of missions including search and rescue, boating safety regulation, and support for aids-to-navigation. We support your effort to ensure that USCG personnel will receive compensation notwithstanding the final passage of the DHS 2019 appropriation legislation. This will allow them to focus on their missions and help ensure the safety of recreational boaters.”

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