Three men were pulled from Lake Erie on Thursday after their boat capsized about 8 miles from shore near Ashtabula, forcing them into the water clutching boat cushions until a pair of local boaters spotted them floating amid the wreckage. The men had made a mayday call to the Coast Guard around 11:30 a.m. after two waves came over the back of their boat, and they were found roughly 41 minutes later, per the Coast Guard.
The rescue, which happened around 12:15 p.m. about 8 miles from shore near Ashtabula, was carried out by two boaters named Mike Adams and Pete Easton, who came across the capsized boat and found the three men floating in the water, according to News 5 Cleveland. All three men were wearing life vests when they were pulled from the water, and EMS was waiting when the boat carrying them docked. Easton said one of the stranded fishermen reported being 87 years old.
Adams and Easton had reportedly caught 12 walleye of their own that morning before coming across the capsized boat and its stranded passengers, per the station's report. The rescued men have not been publicly identified.
A Coast Guard Station Left Unstaffed
The Coast Guard had not yet arrived by the time Adams and Easton spotted the boat and fishermen, the outlet reported. That gap traces back to a broader staffing shift: the Coast Guard closed its Ashtabula Harbor station in 2023 and downsized its Fairport Harbor station the same year, part of a nationwide move that shifted primary search-and-rescue coverage for the area to stations in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Cleveland, according to WKYC-TV. The Coast Guard has said it would staff the stations when necessary and on higher-demand days, per the same 2024 statement.
The Ashtabula Harbor station's roots run deep — it began as a U.S. Life-Saving Service station in 1876, was folded into the Coast Guard in 1915, and had kept a continuous presence guarding the harbor since 1893, according to the Coast Guard Historian's Office. That history now sits unmanned, leaving the Ashtabula Fire Department to pick up the slack on the water. The department has some water-rescue training and has handled one or two water incidents on its own since the Coast Guard shuttered the harbor station, but has responded to seven water incidents this summer alone, per the station's report.
Fire Chief Says the Coast Guard Has Been Scarce
Ashtabula Fire Chief Geoff Cannon said the department cannot devote enough time to staffing its rescue boat 24 hours a day, and he said the current water-rescue situation is less safe than it should be. Cannon told News 5 Cleveland that the Coast Guard had not been routinely present in the area this summer, and he called for the Coast Guard to return to Ashtabula. The Coast Guard did not respond to a request for comment on any immediate plans to reopen the Ashtabula Harbor station, the outlet noted.
Local officials have been pressing that case directly to Washington. In mid-August, eight Ashtabula police officers and firefighters completed a three-day Coast Guard boat operator certification course while city leaders and Cannon lobbied U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce's office to restore staffing to the local station, according to NEOhio.news.
A Pattern of Close Calls Off Ashtabula County
Thursday's rescue is not an isolated case. Just two weeks earlier, on August 12, a 22-foot boat overturned roughly nine miles offshore near Conneaut in Ashtabula County, and a passing Good Samaritan boat pulled two passengers from the water while Coast Guard response boats deployed from Fairport and Erie to search for the missing 73-year-old boat owner, as Hoodline previously reported. In September 2025, Ashtabula police and fire personnel launched their local rescue boat to find and save a man and a 3-year-old child who had fallen overboard seven to eight miles off Ashtabula's shore, completing that rescue after an hour-long multi-agency search.
Lake Erie's central basin off Ashtabula averages only about 60 feet in depth, a shallow profile that makes its open waters unusually prone to sudden, severe wave buildup when surface winds shift, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. That geography helps explain how a boat can be swamped so far from shore with little warning. In July 2024, a Coast Guard MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew from Air Station Detroit had to rescue five boaters clinging to a cooler 10 miles off the Ashtabula coast after a wave swamped their 22-foot boat, per 10TV WBNS.
Life Jackets and the Numbers Behind the Risk
State law under Ohio Revised Code § 1547.25 requires recreational vessels 16 feet or longer to carry one wearable Coast Guard-approved life jacket per passenger plus at least one throwable flotation device, though adults are not legally required to wear a life jacket while underway, per the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Drowning causes nearly 90% of boating fatalities nationwide, and in 2024, 12 of Ohio's 16 boating drowning victims were either not wearing a life jacket or wearing one improperly, the department has reported. Lake Erie recorded 3 of the state's 16 total recreational boating fatalities in 2024, with capsizing, swamping, and falling overboard accounting for 13 of those 16 deaths statewide.
All three men rescued Thursday were wearing life vests, a detail that lines up with the state's own data on survival. As Ashtabula's fire department continues training its own crews to fill the offshore gap, the outcome of Thursday's rescue underscores what local officials have been saying for months: on Lake Erie's open water, survival often comes down to who — or what — reaches you first.
