A man was rescued after being found clinging to a dock piling in the frigid waters of Cowichan Bay on Saturday.
Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue said its Cowichan Bay Station 34 received reports of a capsized vessel and a person in the water, but had little other information to go on.
The crew started searching the bay north of the marina.
Conditions were calm, and the crew was able to quickly spot an overturned aluminum skiff.
There was no sign of the missing man, so the crew headed toward the Pacific and Industrial Marine docks, the closest point of land.
There, they found the man in a hypothermic state in the water holding on to a piling beneath the dock.
He was pulled into the rescue boat and transported to a waiting ambulance at Hecate Park.