JAMESTOWN — A Native American canoe that’s part of the 2013 Intertribal Canoe Journal/Paddle to Quinault overturned in waters 5 miles north of Port Townsend this morning.
The nine pullers from Vancouver Island who were tossed into the water were taken by a Coast Guard medium response boat to Sequim, where they were treated for mild hypothermic conditions, the Coast Guard reported.
A passing cargo vessel alerted the Coast Guard 25-foot Response Boat Small based in Port Angeles and the Coast Guard 45-foot Response Boat Medium, out of Bellingham Wash., of the overturned canoe with people waving their arms in the water shortly after 7 a.m.
All nine people were recovered by the 45-foot response boat and were transferred to John Wayne Marina in Sequim, where Clallam County Fire District No. 3 emergency medical technicians were waiting.
One 22-year-old puller was taken to Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles because his body temperature was below 92 degrees, a fire district spokesperson said.
The 25-foot response boat towed the canoe to John Wayne Marina.
The canoe and others in the Canoe Journey had just left Port Townsend for Jamestown, a beach northeast of Sequim, in the second North Olympic Peninsula leg of the annual intertribal paddle when the canoe — whose tribe was unidentified — flipped and threw the nine pullers into the chilly water.
Participants were required before the journey to practice how to survive in chilly waters after a canoe flips, and how to right the canoe.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie, who’s at the scene of the canoe arrivals at Jamestown, contributed to this report.
