Dave, thought you might have had it better that 3rd hand, since most of us were with you Saturday! Anyway...
A local posse of 10 or so were doing middle laps at about 3.9ft on the Pine View gauge on Frideay evening when we had a swimmer in the Green Bridge drop. Gnarly enough that he got beat up and went under the tree on the RHS of the rapid below before he self rescued. He MAY NOT have gone under the tree (and been able to self rescue faster) if his paddle had not come back to him and he did not try to swim with it. The desire to rescue his gear probably exposed to a greater hazard (lesson #1 - gear is cheap). I wouldn't consider this a near drowning, but it could have been a lot worse had he got hooked up in the tree.
The swimmer's boat stayed in or near the hole for 30 or so more seconds, where one of our party started to connect his lifevest rescue tether to the boat. This was above a the pretty juicy class 4 section below the Green Bridge drop. Fortunatley we manage to wave off this action and the boat was allow to wash downstream (lesson #2 part a - gear is cheap).
The swimmer's boat proceeded towards lowers. Another of our group attempted to haul the boat to the side with is lifevest rescue tether, starting about 2 rapids above lowers (lesson #2 part b - gear is cheap). Even though these are relatively easy rapids, he could not get the boat to the side, even with some help pushing. At a point about 100 yards above the road bridge above lowers, he started trying to disconnect his tether. I'm not sure if he tried unclipping from the boat, but he certainly tried to release the tether from his life vest. Regardless, he could not disconnect before being washed into the lead in to lowers (under the bridge) where he swam.
At this point one of the crew chased him into lowers, which is a burly class 5+ as this level. His run through the rapid featured a number of rolls, and by about 1/2 way down (or less) he could be of no assistance to the swimmer, and was paddling for his own survival. Although he did well to run the rapid, he was pretty much as the river's mercy from the 1/2 way point, with some tired looking rolls at the bottom (lesson #3 - don't make yourself a victim, even for a person).
We believe our second swimmer was disconnected from the boat before entering the large entrance hole at the top of lowers, where he recirculated several times. The recirculations allowed two of our team to get into a good throw bagging position at the 1/2 way point. They landed a bag across the swimmer as he passed, but the swimmer did not respond to it. By the time the swimmer flushed through to the bottom of the rapid he was close to done, but realized that he was at the bottom and found the will to self rescue (although other rescues were close to him by that time). This was as near to a drowning at I have witnessed on a river. Although he did not ingest water into his lungs, he was on the verge of blacking out.
This series of events unfolded extremely quickly, and there were a lot of good reactions by many. However, we managed to repeat the same mistake three times... we put ourselves at MORE risk, creating MORE potential victims for the sake of gear in two cases and a person in the third case. Although there are more lessons to learn, this is by far the biggie. We are all very thankful that we can learn/reaffirm these lessons with only a few bruises.
Marty