The Santa Barbara County Fire Department was summoned to rescue two local college students from the freezing ocean waters near Isla Vista in the early morning hours on Saturday after they tried to sail on a boat of their own creation.
According to a report from The San Luis Obispo Tribune, the two students attempted to build their own boat with a host of unconventional materials, including 20 Home Depot orange buckets, two plastic kiddie pools, a large piece of plywood and plenty of duct tape.
Quoting a lyric from the SpongeBob Squarepants theme song, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department’s public information officer Mike Eliason tweeted about the weekend encounter to the amusement of his followers.
“If Nautical Nonsense Is Something You Wish,” he captioned the post.
Eliason spoke to Newsweek and explained what he encountered on his early morning rescue, calling it a “scratch your head moment.”
“We sent our resources and we saw that they were about 300 yards offshore,” he told Newsweek.
Eliason explained that as the men were struggling on the waters, a concerned bystander near their takeoff point at the University of California, Santa Barbara called emergency rescue services at 2 a.m. A water crew spent about 30 minutes wrangling with the boat on the open waters, but they all safely docked without injuries.
“We don’t know why they chose to put out there at that late of an hour rather than at 10 a.m. on a bright sunny day, but they chose to do that.”
The rescue operation required three engine companies, two water rescue teams and an ambulance. He noted that one team had to navigate the dark seas around “jagged points” to reach the young men.
He also told Newsweek that the water temperature was approximately 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and the two sailors had “at least one paddle,” but neither wore a wetsuit.
“They’re not engineering students … it did take a lot of resources that put them at unnecessary risk going out in the dark looking for these guys and digging their jet skis around areas that are rocky trying to get to these guys when they didn’t really need to be there at that time,” Eliason told Newsweek.
He also added in the Twitter post that at this time, alcohol is not believed to have been a contributing factor in any of the decisions made.
Several in the comments section on Twitter found the situation highly amusing.
One user claimed to be one of the two University of California, Santa Barbara students stranded on the boat. In a statement to Newsweek, the anonymous Twitter user, under the account name @RescuedBoat, claimed that the situation has been blown out of proportion.
He claimed that he and a friend built the boat as a passion project, but the two had done ample research as they constructed the boat.
He told Newsweek that “all of the buckets were bolted to the structure, and filled with an appropriate amount of ballast to keep [it] upright.” It was on their way to the test run that they drew a crowd, including local law enforcement.
“We were also stopped by police who asked us questions about the boat, but upon learning we had done the math and planning, they told us good luck and left,” he claimed to Newsweek.
Though he admitted they did not make it very far offshore, he firmly stated that he and his peer were in control of the vessel the whole time. He claimed emergency services were only called in because someone on the shore grew worried on their behalf.
He also claimed that one responding officer called the operation “bada**.”
@RescueBoat also provided Newsweek with a Home Depot receipt to prove his involvement with the project. Of the items purchased, there were 19 orange buckets and a large piece of plywood cut in-store.
Both @RescueBoat and Eliason confirmed to Newsweek that after the rescue mission, the homemade boat was tied down, but by the next day weather conditions had torn the boat apart.
“Which is unfortunate, because we certainly did not mean to contribute any trash to our local beaches,” the alleged student said.
Eliason reflected that while this was a first for him, other students in the past have attempted to at least float on the Isla Vista point where the two were found on Saturday.
“They used to have these non-sanctioned ‘Floatopia’ events that in the summer [or] spring break, a lot of people would be on the beach and they would create these rafts and stuff just to sit on in the water,” he told Newsweek.
“They’d come up with a lot of different things to be on the water, but this was a first as far as I know about how they made it with the buckets and the kiddie pools and everything else.”