A fishing boat captain was able to salvage his vessel after it was taking on water and his crew had to be rescued by the United States Coast Guard.

Chris Winkler was not on his boat the New Age when it became distressed off the coast of Fire Island Wednesday morning. The boat began to take on water and the crew radioed for help. The Coast Guard rescued the crew and they were OK. But the boat remained out at sea.

Winkler had just landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport after a ski trip to Colorado when he was alerted about the rescue.

“First thing, you know, ‘Hey, are my guys all right?’ And that’s all I needed to hear was that they were all right. That changed everything from that point on,” Winkler says. “A boat is a boat. I can replace a boat…but people's lives, that’s another story.”

But with the crew present and accounted for – Winkler realized that he could salvage the New Age. So, with the help of his brother-in-law Matt Fabrizio, the pair took Fabrizio’s boat and some water pumps out to reach the New Age. They were able to pump out the water and Winkler steered the New Age to the Belford Seafood Co-op in Monmouth County.

Winkler says that he was even able to salvage the fish that his crew caught. He also says that there was no damage to the boat.