The Coast Guard immediately launched a 25-foot response boat crew from Coast Guard Station Yankeetown and an HH-60 Jayhawk rescue helicopter crew from Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Fla., to assist the two men.

While rescue crews were en route to the scene of the first incident, watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg received a second call at 2:15 p.m. from a man reporting that his 18-foot boat was sinking, and he and two other boaters were clinging to a channel marker piling in the Crystal River Barge Canal, in Crystal River, Fla.  He also reported that a fourth person was clinging to the partially submerged hull of his boat, which had drifted out of his sight.

Once the two boaters from the first case were rescued by the Coast Guard, the boat crew immediately diverted to the Crystal River Barge Canal and pulled the three boaters clinging to the channel marker pilings out of the water as well as a fourth person clinging to the boat's hull.

The second group of rescued boaters then reported that they witnessed another vessel in distress with three people onboard.

The Coast Guard boat crew located and rescued the final three boaters on an island two miles southwest of the Homosassa River at around 3 p.m.

All of the rescued boaters were taken to to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission boat ramp on the Crystal River Barge Canal, where they received medical treatment from Emergency Medical Service personnel and were released.