Strong currents pulled a heavyweight crew boat into Ledyard Bridge Friday afternoon, cracking the boat and forcing five students into the ice-cold Connecticut River.
No one was hurt. Coaches overseeing the practice rescued the students in less than a minute, Coach Scott Armstrong said. The$9,000 boat sustained damage but is repairable, he said.
Stanley Dunn '96, Jaime Hutter '96, Andrew Webb '96 and Matt Wiltshire '96 were the rowers in the boat. Sarah LeSure '97 was the coxswain.
"None of us can see what's in front of us when we're rowing," Webb said. "We were paddling through the bridge and the current was going really fast."
LeSure told the rowers to turn the boat and the current swept the boat into the bridge. Webb said a rower tried to push the boat away from the bridge with an oar, but the oar snapped. The boat then began filling up with water, he said.
"At first, we thought we were going to be in trouble for scratching the boat up," Webb said. "Then the boat flipped and we had to get our feet undone from the boat."
Webb said he was nervous "up until the point where I saw the coach."
Armstrong said because of the temperature of the water, which he estimated to be 35 degrees, the students could have been in serious danger if they had been in the water for more than three minutes.
Also, Armstrong said if they "go in the water and they go down, they'd be hard to rescue, but we had a coaching launch right there. The prompt rescue by the coaches saved the day."
Webb said the students had a "few bumps and bruises, but nothing serious."
The five students raced in a different boat the next day and won.
