‘We’re not dying tonight’: Canadian family recalls dramatic rescue as their boat ran aground in the Bahamas

A Canadian couple’s dream voyage of working remotely on a sailboat while showing their eight-year-old daughter the world came to a sudden end earlier this week when their vessel was blown off course and ran aground on a coral reef.

Tony Bryant, Krista Scholl, and their daughter Adelaide are lucky to be alive after a dramatic rescue by the U.S. Coast Guard off an island in the Bahamas, as they huddled in a life raft as waves battered their boat and they frantically signalled for help.

“It’s something that will stick with me the rest of my life, as [my daughter] turned to me and said, ‘Dad, are we going to die?’” Byrant recalled in a video call with CTV News from Inagua Islands.

“I said, ‘Not tonight, kiddo, we’re not dying tonight,’” he said.

It took years of working in Toronto, saving, and personally repairing their vessel, Mischief, to seaworthiness to make the family’s liveaboard life possible, Scholl said.

“We were part of the downtown Toronto rat race for nine years before we left to travel,” said Scholl.

By 2023, they started living on Mischief full-time and set sail through Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and then south along the U.S. Atlantic Coast.

All the while, they worked remote jobs from the sailboat’s deck and documented their life on Instagram with the username @sailingfamilymischief.

It was an incredible opportunity for their daughter to experience what the ocean had to offer, they said.

“Every place we’d go to was something different. There were dolphins jumping off the bow, so we’d learn about dolphins,” Bryant said.

On Sunday, the family embarked from Acklins Island in the Bahamas, heading for Betsy Bay on Mayaguana Island, with a final destination of the Dominican Republic.

But as they cruised south of Plana Cays, they found themselves sailing into the wind, Bryant said. They tacked but ended up being blown northwards.

“There was a series of events and very quickly we went from 500 feet of water to 100 feet of water, then all the way down to five – all within a mile,” Scholl recalled.

The sailboat, which has a six-foot keel, ran aground. The family tried to right it, but it began taking on water rapidly. They deployed the life raft and put Adelaide in it.

It was impossible to retrieve much from the sailboat – it was taking on water too fast, Bryant said.

“Everything happened so quickly,” Bryant said. He put the anchor down, tied the raft to the boat, and started making distress calls on a handheld radio.

They didn’t know this at the time, but a passing ship had heard the calls and radioed the U.S. Coast Guard with their position. And when the couple saw their helicopters approach, they used their flares to signal their position.

“That was the most amazing noise I’ve ever heard, that helicopter approaching,” Scholl said.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s video shows a diver dropping from the helicopter and assisting as the family is put in a basket and hauled up to the helicopter.

“We held on, and I’m sure it was very scary for Adelaide because of the noise and the spray and the whipping water,” said Scholl. “At that point, for me, it was the moment where I could say, ok. We’re going to be ok.”

The family is alive and grateful to the Coast Guard. Almost everything they owned is in the ocean, along with the vessel that was their home for more than two years.

Right now, they are staying with Bahamians, who are giving them clothes and food. One struggle is to find replacement passports, as many of the primary documents, like birth certificates, were lost.

“Our challenge is to get identification so we can fly, or anything, so we can fly back to Canada,” Bryant said.

The family has started a GoFundMe fundraising campaign to pay for costs in the Bahamas, and for the costs of getting back to Toronto.

As for whether they’ll try to return to a liveaboard life, the family says they’re not sure.

“We lived our life on the boat, and we loved the community that we were a part of. I can’t imagine going back to regular land life. But that’s a question for later on,” Scholl said.

“We want to rebuild something. It won’t be Mischief, unfortunately. Sadly, she’s not to be salvaged at this point, but, you know, that doesn’t mean there’s not another Mischief out there.”