Boater found shipwrecked, safe in Bahamas

CHICAGO — A Chicago area boater who was missing for several days was found safe on an uninhabited island in the Bahamas
Tuesday afternoon, according to his son, who received a cell phone call
from his father aboard the fishing boat that rescued him.

Richard McClow, 79, of Naperville, Ill., was traveling alone in his 23-foot motorized boat from Fort Pierce, Fla., to Marsh Harbor in the Bahamas
to meet his girlfriend when he suddenly went in the wrong direction and
ran aground on the remote island, the avid boater told his son by phone.

McClow said the waves flipped the boat and destroyed it on rocks off the coast of the island.

A news release from the U.S. Coast Guard said Richard McClow was spotted on the island of Great Sale Cay and referred to his rescuer only as “a good Samaritan.”

David McClow, of Garrett, Ind.,
said his father told him he was in good health when he called from the
fishing boat, which was en route to the Bahamiam city of Freeport.

David McClow said his father told him he was on the
island for almost four days and was running out of food. He told his
son that several boats were anchored off the island but the people on
the ships could not hear him or see him.

David McClow said his wife answered the phone, heard her father-in-law’s voice, and became frantic after the phone went dead.

“‘You’re alive,'” David McClow said his wife shouted before the call disconnected.

Richard then called back a second time, and they lost contact again. However, a third attempt proved more successful and David McClow learned more details, but he has yet to learn more specifics about the actual rescue itself.

“I’m so happy I can’t wait to give him a big hug,”
he said. “I figured something catastrophic happened to the boat. I
thought maybe he had a stroke or heart attack. I had all kinds of
scenarios going on in my mind.”

McClow said his father has been an avid boater all
his life and sailed around the world in the 1990s. He said his father
lives on the boat in Florida and in the Caribbean during the winter months. He plans to fly home from Freeport in the coming days.

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