River boat rescue options pondered

The M.S. River Rouge tour boat remains lodged on asandbar, just north of Winnipeg, and officials are trying to figure out how to free it.

The boat hit a sandbar and ran aground in the Red River around 10:30 a.m. Thursday with69 passengers aboard.

They and the crew were rescued around 7 p.m. by the Canadian Coast Guard and some helpful boaters, who made repeated trips between the beached boat and a dock about three kilometres south of the stricken vessel.

At the dock, passengers were put onwaiting buses.

Bill and Mary Mathews, who were on the boat, saidthe helpful staff made the adventure as pleasant as possible.

"[They] brought us food and beverages and kept us informed about what was happening and we felt well taken care of. [It was a] beautiful day," Bill Mathews said.

"There was no mosquitoes there andlots of cold drinks."

The boat was just an hour into the all-day tour, which was scheduled to stop at Lower Fort Garry and return to the Winnipeg dock at 5 p.m., when everything came to a sudden halt.

Officials say the boat hit a section of the river that is about a half-metre deep because of a large sandbar.

Kyriakos Vogiatzakis, who owns the boat, said the depth must be at least 1.2 metres for the River Rouge to sail.

He was on the boat when it got stuck andsaid there wereno indications the river there was so shallow.

"The river had no buoys within the parameters of the do-not-approach zone. We certainly got in that zone and we got hung up, of course," he said.

"I don't want to point fingers, but I think the buoys should have been there not only for our purposes of safe navigation, but assuming someone was water-skiing, you know with just a regular speedboat on the river, it could be pretty treacherous bottoming out at high speeds."

When the River Rouge became wedged, thecaptain couldn't back the vessel off the bottom. Atug boat was called in but it also couldn't budge the big boat, which is large enough tohandle groups of up to 400 people.

A small Zodiac coast guard rescue boat from Gimli was moved by truck to Winnipeg andferriedgroups of passengers off the River Rouge, which remained in place through the night.

Vogiatzakis saidone of the options beingconsidered to dislodge it involves raising the river level. Officials are consideringclosing thegates at Lockport, to push up the river level in the hopes the boat will rise up, too.

No decision has yet been made.