Good reminder to pay attention to your environment | The Woodsman Hut | Forums

This man was lucky

Eric Gauthier, 34, who’d been working on a pipeline inspection team in the oil patch for three weeks, went fishing on Lake Audubon not long after sunrise Sunday morning, unaware as he paddled along and fished from his canoe that extremely dangerous winds were forecast up to 60 mph.

Gauthier, who spoke by phone Tuesday from Michigan, said the water went from glassy to 4- to 5-foot waves within minutes. He said he was paddling furiously toward an island, when a wind shear tipped his canoe and sent him swimming for his life toward landfall 200 yards away.

“I was on a swimming team for 15 years, but I was right on the edge,” he said of that swim. “The last time I went under (the rolling waves), I thought that was it. I thought of Bonnie (Trapp, his fiance) and I thought, `Don’t quit yet,’ and then my foot touched bottom.”

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