“I should have been drowned I suppose, but somebody was with me.”
A man who lives in Kilbride but is originally from Placentia Bay is lucky to be alive following a harrowing boating incident on the water yesterday.
Michael Leonard, 74, went out to pick up a meal of fish on Placentia Bay yesterday when he lost all the power in his boat. He estimates he drifted about a mile and a half, rowing and sculling her to the shore, when yesterday’s storm came up—driving him onto the rocks.
Michael Leonard spoke with Paddy Daly on VOCM Open Line. Listen to the call below:
Leonard says he was lucky to get out of the boat without getting killed and managed to get into the nearby woods.
He estimates he walked about an hour and a half through the woods before he was found by his wife, and the Coast Guard and other rescue officials were called in.
Leonard sent out a special bouquet today to the people who came to his rescue including Brian Dray and his wife Trudy who discovered his boat, and his wife Veronica who found him in the woods.
When the search and rescue group in Southeast Bight in Placentia Bay rescued him, he said he was “just about gone… I wasn’t able to walk anymore, froze to death and soaking wet.”
Leonard calls it a harrowing experience. The Cormorant helicopter picked him up and flew him to the Health Sciences in St. John’s. He says he’s here today, but he should have been drowned or frozen to death on the land.
Leonard, who is a stroke and heart attack survivor, has lung problems and back injuries but managed to survive. He even thanked the moose for their paths through the woods that allowed him to walk as far as he did.
