SEATTLE, WA—Surgeons successfully reattached the fingertips of a Washington drift boat angler after he used a pocketknife to free himself as his craft was rapidly sinking in a swift current. William Messenger, 51, was steelhead fishing on the Wynoochee River in a 16-foot drift boat with his daughter’s boyfriend when the side of the boat slammed into a logjam, wedging his left index and middle fingers between the boat and an alder tree. The current held the boat in place.

When his companion swam to shore and went for help, Messenger worried he could drown before rescuers arrived. That’s when he took drastic measures.

Help arrived minutes later.

“Hindsight is 20-20,” says Grays Harbor County Undersheriff Rick Scott. “If he’d have known help was not that far away, he might have held off taking the steps that he did.”

Emergency medical personnel recovered Messenger’s severed fingers from the logjam and took them to Harborview Medical Center, where reattachment surgery proved successful.