Boat Owner, 80, Is Saved From Water

An 80-year-old man was plucked from Huntington Harbour alive but suffering from exhaustion and hypothermia after he slipped and fell off a boat dock into chilly, 55-degree water, a sheriff’s spokesman said Thursday.

Bertram Ross of Huntington Harbour went to check on his boat about 5:20 p.m. Wednesday, when he lost his footing on a wet dock near Davenport Island and went into the water, said Deputy Steven McCormick, who rescued Ross.

“I heard somebody yelling, and I couldn’t make out what it was,” said McCormick, 31, of the sheriff’s Harbor Patrol Division.

The deputy, who was in the main channel south of Short Channel, turned his patrol boat around and found Ross, exhausted and wedged between the swim step of his boat and the dock. McCormick pulled Ross onto the dock.

Ross told McCormick he had injured his leg and had been in the water about 15 minutes.

He was treated at Columbia-Huntington Hospital in Huntington Beach for hypothermia and a torn leg muscle and released, McCormick said.

Luckily, McCormick had been on an extended shift because of Wednesday’s rain and foul weather.

“My sergeant requested that I stay over some extra hours,” McCormick said. “It had rained all day, and there was worry about flooding from a flood control channel.”