WILTON – A jet skier on Wilson Lake saved a man from drowning after he fell out of his boat and was struck several times by it as it continued to run.
“I only had about two more strokes left in me,” Tom Chapman said of the moment his rescuer appeared Friday evening.
Chapman, 53, was trying the new 9.9-horsepower motor on his 12-foot aluminum fishing boat when, in an attempt to better balance the boat, he fell over the side with the motor still running. The motor was at full throttle, and the boat was making tight, fast circles as it struck him at least three times – in the head, the mouth and the shoulder, he said Monday.
Adam Jordan, 25, having come home from work early, decided to take a ride on his jet ski at around 4:30 p.m. when he saw a disturbance and a flash about a mile away. As he got closer, he saw life jackets floating in the water and then just the top of Chapman’s head barely staying above water, he said. He only got “half a response” from Chapman as he tried to coax him to swim towards him. He also saw the boat’s propeller swing by only inches away from Chapman.
Help arrives
“It was very surreal,” Jordan said.
He had to time his rescue exactly to avoid being hit by the boat himself. When he reached Chapman, he held onto both his arms and pulled him out of the water. Chapman did not have the strength to hold on himself.
He had no color in his face and his lips were purple, Jordan said.
Meanwhile, a neighbor, having seen the spinning boat, alerted Dennis Taylor, who jumped onto his pontoon boat with his daughter, Asha, to help.
“They just flopped me up on the deck,” Chapman said. He was totally exhausted, he added. He estimates he’d been in the water between three and 10 minutes.
“It was just a blur,” he said.
He wasn’t seriously hurt, just in shock, Taylor said, a fact confirmed by ambulance personnel who examined Chapman but did not take him to the hospital after he arrived at the boat landing on Taylor’s boat.
Watery rodeo’
But Chapman’s boat was still running circles in the middle of the 563-acre lake and coming dangerously close to docks and other property. Several firefighters went out on Taylor’s boat but were unable to devise a safe means by which to stop the cranked-up craft and decided, instead, to let it run out of gas.
Jordan and another jet skier, Kenny Lake, spent nearly the next two hours in a sort of runabout rodeo, directing their wake in the direction of the boat to prevent it from getting too close to shore. The two prevented a lot of property damage, according to Chapman.
“I’m glad he was there; the young man saved my life,” Chapman said of Jordan.
“It brings to light the fact that it could have been me,” Jordan said. “I’m glad it worked out the way it did.”
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