Local hero...........twice in one month!!

[Sandy]

Vince is a great guy who sails out of Edison Boat Club in Detroit with me.  We were just talking the other day about how lucky he was to find and rescue the first dude(single handed by the way).And what a once in a lifetime kinda thing it was.  Just goes to show you that those "little voices" aren't always in your head!...... Check it out................ 
-Sandy

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Kevin Taing, 18, spent three terrifying hours in the water of Lake St. Clair before being rescued by U.S. boaters. Kevin Taing, 18, spent three terrifying hours in the water of Lake St. Clair before being rescued by U.S. boaters.

If you've never met an angel, there's one in Plymouth who works in the outdoor garden section of a Home Depot and sails a 32-footer out of the Edison Boat Club near Belle Isle.

His name is Vince Pardi and two local men who spent hours Monday hopelessly drifting in the frigid waters of Lake St. Clair probably owe their lives to the Michigan man.

"He's like an angel on the water," Essex OPP Const. Janet Hayes said of Pardi Tuesday, the day after he and his sailing partner Reggie Harris plucked two hypothermic Windsor brothers out of the cold wet.

Remarkably, Monday's life-saving rescue came less than four weeks after Pardi saved the life of another boater under uncannily similar near-fatal circumstances. Tragically, one of the American brothers in that earlier Sept. 23 incident didn't make it.

The Windsor brothers rescued Monday realize how close they were to dying.

"I'm very lucky," Kevin Tiang said from his parents' home Tuesday. After several hours shivering in the current after the old fishing boat his brother Shihuy had recently acquired got swamped, Kevin, 18, said he "probably" didn't have much longer to live. Both men shouted for hours but the shoreline was far away and no other boats were in sight.

Kevin was the fortunate one after the bilge pump quit and their leaky bass boat quickly filled with water. He had a life vest and had decided to try and make his way back to shore. Shihuy, 27, lashed to an empty fuel container and hanging onto the small bit of boat remaining above the surface, had to stay with the vessel, which was drifting further and further away from shore.

Sailing silently with no other vessels in sight, Pardi said he heard a far-off sound but couldn't see anything late in the afternoon. Curious, however, he re-directed his Irwin toward the sound, eventually spotting Shihuy through high-powered binoculars.

"When we got there, he just said, 'Have you got my brother on board?'" said Pardi. About half an hour later, with the OPP marine unit and Canadian and U.S. Coast Guard vessels responding to his mayday calls, Pardi and Harris pulled Kevin out, approximately four hours after the brothers' boat sank.

"I was terrified. I could feel the cold in my body and I was shaking like crazy," said Kevin, who was treated for hypothermia at Windsor Regional Hospital and then released Monday night. Shihuy was kept overnight for observation.

Kevin said he was so overjoyed at having been found alive that he was laughing in the ambulance on his way to the hospital.

Pardi described as "surreal" Monday's incident, coming so shortly after his first encounter with stranded boating brothers. He had just finished telling his friend about hearing the distant voice on the water a month earlier when he heard a similar distant sound.

"I was reluctant to say anything ... but I just had to investigate. 'This is crazy,' I said, 'But I thought I heard something,'" he recalls telling Harris, convinced his friend would truly think he wasn't quite sane. But Harris responded that he had also heard the strange sound.

"It's very, very odd ... all I can say is it's surreal," said Pardi, adding there were so many lucky factors that contributed to Monday's successful outcome. He said his heart sank when Shihuy's first words were about his brother. That was exactly what the first recovered brother had said during the previous rescue, one that ended in the recovery of the sibling's body.

"I'm so glad for the both of them -- it was really good fortune," said Pardi.

Hayes said both Pardi and Harris are being nominated by the OPP for life-saving awards "for their heroic efforts."

Said Pardi: "I'm not any kind of hero -- anybody else out there would have done the same thing."

Each of his last two sailing trips that ended in lives being saved had been planned as the last of the season. Asked if it's time to put his sailing boat away for the winter, Pardi said: "I'm kinda afraid to go back out now."

But after a pause of laughter the sailor added: "It depends on the weather."

dschmidt@thestar.canwest.com or 519-255-5586 © The Windsor Star 2008 

[hearsejr]

kewl deal. if gets in town I'll have him case of grog wait'n.


  Bill