A boater stuck at sea triggered a large rescue effort Tuesday afternoon.

At 11:40 a.m., Central Whidbey Island Fire and Rescue was dispatched to a 15-foot sailboat that could not get to the shore and whose lone occupant, an 86-year-old man, was possibly experiencing hypothermia, according to Fire Chief Jerry Helm.

Helm, who was assisting the rescue effort from land, said the weather conditions were not ideal, but not particularly bad, either, with 2- to 3-foot-tall choppy waves. The man was so cold he couldn’t operate the vessel and dispatchers reported he was hard to understand.

Central Whidbey, which deployed the 25-foot Marine 5 rescue boat from Keystone, requested support from North Whidbey Fire and Rescue to search on the northern shores of the island, as the initial report indicated the vessel was in the Fort Ebey area.

The vessel was instead found farther south in the Cedar Hollow area, Helm said.

Two boats that happened to be escorting a Navy submarine also joined the effort and reached the boat in distress, taking the passenger on board and towing the sailboat just south of Fort Ebey, where the man was then moved onto Marine 5 and taken to Keystone, where an ambulance took him to WhidbeyHealth Medical Center, Helm said.

Other entities that helped with the approximately hour-and-a-half-long effort were the Island County Sheriff’s Office and Washington State Parks, which conducted a search from land, as well as a boat from the Department of Homeland Security.