Once the subject of county budget battles, rescue boat now seen as a lifesaver

Three people were adrift on Lake Michigan in a sailboat on Saturday, Oct. 5, a few miles offshore from Port Washington.

They had lost power to their engine, waves were eight feet high or more and they could not maneuver their boat into the Port harbor.

Coming to their rescue was the Ozaukee County Rescue Boat and its four-man crew.

“It was some of the heaviest water we’ve been in,” said Scott Ziegler, the county Emergency Management Office director who oversees the boat’s operation and was on that call. “Getting them rigged in those conditions was pretty tricky. But all went well.” 

Crew member Bill Lundgren said rescues like that are par for the course for the 16 volunteer members of the Ozaukee County Water Safety Patrol and its rescue boat.

“You find people having one of the worst days of their lives and by the time it’s over, they’re really glad we were there,” he said.

It used to be that the budget for the rescue boat was an annual cause for debate among Port Washington aldermen and county supervisors.

Some supervisors from inland or southern districts thought the rescue boat was primarily a service for well-heeled yachtsmen who sailed out of the Port Washington marina and insisted the city contribute to boat operations.

One of the boat’s longest-serving crew members, Ray Meyer, remembers those days.

“It was a time you felt you were living hand to mouth,” not sure whether the boat would survive one year to the next, he said.

But more recently there has been nary a peep over the boat’s budget, ever since the county Emergency Management Office was brought under the aegis of the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

The last $10,000 payment by the city to support the rescue boat’s $27,000 budget was in December of 2017, Ozaukee County Administrator Jason Dzwinel said. 

The city continues to donate dock space in the marina and provides a 1,200-gallon fuel allotment for the boat, which Ziegler said the boat never comes close to using.

Since 2017, the boat’s operations have been fully funded by the Sheriff’s Office and the county property tax levy. There are no plans to make further requests of the city, officials say.

“(Funding) became much less of a looming issue,” said Meyer, who will mark 25 years with the service next June. “If the sheriff feels it’s a priority, it’s going to get a more favorable viewing by the County Board.” 

The rescue boat sits almost exactly on the service-area boundaries of the Sheboygan and Milwaukee Coast Guard stations. Any rescue call to those stations would mean a 45-minute wait for boaters needing help.

The rescue boat operates much like a fire department. There are currently 16 members who are paid on call. Ziegler, serving as the program director, and Bobby Kaslick, the deputy emergency management director, are the only full-time paid staff members, but are not paid out of the rescue boat operations fund.

Some crew members also are members of local fire departments, Ziegler said.

Recent upgrades to the boat have included adding underwater sonar, training crew members as rescue swimmers and training to deliver more medical services on the water.

At least three crew members and usually four go out on each call, Ziegler said.

Ziegler is often one of them, being that he lives closest to the harbor.

Calls for help have ranged from the mundane — people out of gas — to the humorous — a father and daughter blown out to open water inside an inflatable ball marked “for inland use only” — to the life-threatening — boats swamped in storms, medical emergencies or people trapped on the harbor’s breakwater by powerful waves.

“Like any public service, you get a sense of self-satisfaction from serving the community,” Meyer said, explaining why he has been a crew member for so long. “Occasionally, you are saving lives.”

The boat has answered about 18 calls this year, Ziegler said, which he called “about average” for recent years.

That’s less than half the calls they used to take, however, when a season could include 40 or more calls, he said.

The reduced number of calls is due to a number of factors, including the widespread use of global positioning system technology the end of local commercial fishing. Safety in general also has improved, thanks in part to the education component of the rescue boat crew.

“That’s a big part of what we do,” Lundgren said. “I think we’ve made a difference.”

The rescue boat was custom-built in 1998 by a boat maker in Escanaba, Mich. It replaced a 40-foot former Coast Guard boat that had been surplused.

“With the old boat, there wasn’t room in the cabin for the whole crew so we were out on the deck all the time,” crew member Mike Gasper said. “It was much more of an adventure.” 

Gasper, who is also a Port Washington alderman, has been a crew member for 23 years. He was recruited by Meyer, he said.

“Being paid on call, it was sort of a summer job type thing while I was in college,” he said. 

A crew member since 2000, Lundgren also was recruited by Meyer, whom he met in college. A central Illinois native, Lundgren said the boat was one reason he moved to Port Washington.

“Once I joined the crew, I bought a condo to be closer to the boat,” he said.

It was a decision that has paid dividends, he said.

“About 10 years ago or better, a big storm blew through during a fishing derby. Two large cruiser class, 30-footers rafted together to ride the storm out.

“One of the vessels lost a cleat and hit a guy square in the head. I was able to jump over and render some first aid,” he said.

It turned out the man had a severe skull fracture, but recovered.

“I still run into his sister around town, and to this day she always says, ‘Thank you,’” he said. “That makes you feel good.”

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