Former owner of sunken B.C. vessel speaks, identifies the boat involved

The former owner of a sunken vessel in the Strait of Georgia has identified the boat involved in the incident.

The boat, named Big Coast, was a 30-foot aluminum KingFisher and the former owner said he sold it more than four years ago through a dealer, so he never met the new owner.

“I personally ran it four or five times up and down the inside passage, tuna fished it off Vancouver Island,” Tim Milne, host of the TV show Big Coast, said.

“It’s a super solid craft, and it definitely deserved a better ending than it met… Completely tragic really.”

The vessel, which sank off the coast of Richmond on Sunday, had 10 people on board at the time. Six are presumed drowned and four people were rescued.

Milne said he was not sure what the actual listed capacity was, but he never had 10 people on it, and it also depends on the conditions.

“So, I think a number of people were surprised at the 10 people on the boat, and certainly the lack of life-jackets on the survivors was, that’s a major concern, and I mean that’s … not how we do charter business on the B.C. coast, so everybody knows that,” he said.

The AIS, or Automatic Identification System, was also not changed on the boat following the sale, meaning it was still connected to the TV show Big Coast and Milne.

“I don’t want to get into a lot of details, but the new owners weren’t being very cooperative in terms of us getting that switched over, and then last year that boat was charged, I guess you could say, for fishing in an illegal zone off Pender Island, and they had the AIS of the boat in there, and the shots of it, so that’s that’s how they, they caught the guys, I guess,” he said.

“I know the boat was on dry dock and Steveston after that, for a while.”

Milne said he has been involved in the marine industry on the B.C. coast for 25 years and he has never seen any incident close to what occurred on Sunday.

“It’s an incredible situation, and an incredibly tragic one,” he said. “So, yeah, I don’t know what more to say than that, really.”

Milne said he did hear that the sea was choppy that day, which could make for some tough conditions and Brian Angus and Dorothy Stauffer, who rescued three of the four survivors, described the conditions as “terrible.”

In an update on Thursday, Richmond RCMP said search efforts continue as the RCMP Underwater Recovery Team and the West Coast Marine Services work to locate the vessel. Crews are using SONAR technology to search underwater.

RCMP said conditions in the water have been challenging, making the search slower and more difficult.

“This is not a quick process. Even if the vessel is found today, it could take additional days to safely investigate, document, and potentially recover it,” Cpl. Frank Bryson, Richmond RCMP media relations officer, said in a statement.

Richmond Serious Crimes Unit has conduct of the investigation.

Milne said the incident is very tragic.

“We haven’t seen an incident like this in our industry in a very, very long time,” he said. “So, for something like this to happen, it hurts a lot of people on this coast.

“There’s a lot of people that are pretty passionate about doing this job well. So, this is a tough one, and I think everybody will look forward to getting the answers.”