Not long before Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued a man and his dog who were stranded in a boat off the coast of Sanibel Island.

The 64-year-old man was sailing with his dog when his 36-foot sailboat started taking on water.

“He ran into a bit of bad luck there,” Eric Rodriguez, a public affairs specialist with U.S. Coast Guard District 7, said in a phone interview with The Washington Post.

The Coast Guard declined to disclose the man’s name to protect his privacy. Some people online have criticized the man for boating with his dog before a hurricane.

Rodriguez said the man was attempting to relocate ahead of the storm, and figured he had a window of time to do it.

The Coast Guard rescued a man and his dog off Sanibel Island in Florida on Thursday. U.S. Coast Guard via REUTERS

“The individual was trying to move his vessel to avoid the storm,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not like he was actively trying to maneuver his sailboat into a storm.”

The man placed an emergency radio call to the Coast Guard and a helicopter crew located him about 25 miles off Sanibel Island, around 2:45 p.m. Thursday.

Although the hurricane had not yet made landfall in Florida, “the conditions were very life-threatening,” said Rodriguez. “It did require us to really evaluate the risk.”

In a now-viral video, the man is seen dropping his dog – who was wearing a neon-yellow life jacket – into the water to the hands of a Guardsman, before getting in the water himself. The man and dog then got into a basket attached to the helicopter and were hoisted up to safety.

According to the Coast Guard, the man and canine were brought to Southwest Florida International Airport to receive medical attention from EMS. The boat remained adrift.

“There were no medical concerns, and they are in good health,” Rodriguez said, adding that if the rescue took place any later, there might not have been the same outcome. At least 20 people have been killed in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina in the wake of the Category 4 hurricane, now a tropical storm.

“We’re just glad that everything worked out,” he said. “This is why we do what we do.”