"The Boat's Gone"-Into The Eye-Surviving Hurricane Ian-Part 2

In Part 2 of this incredible survival story, David’s worst fears become reality.

After leaving Venice, Florida to escape Hurricane Ian, David believed he was heading away from danger. Instead, the storm shifted south — placing him directly in the path of the eyewall near Captiva Island.

Alone aboard his DeFever Trawler, conditions rapidly deteriorated.

His cell phone was nearly dead.
 The generator failed.
 Communication was lost.
 Then the boat began dragging anchor.

What followed was a nightmare scenario as the vessel grounded on a shoal before being rolled onto its side by storm surge and violent winds, flooding much of the boat and trapping David inside.

After finally escaping to the deck, he endured hurricane-force winds, driving rain, seawater splashing in to his face, and being pummeled by debris.

With hypothermia setting in and survival uncertain, David activated his EPIRB — triggering a dramatic Coast Guard helicopter rescue in the middle of Hurricane Ian.

Following the rescue, David and Rebecca were faced with the reality of salvaging the wrecked vessel and picking up the pieces. 

This episode can be viewed in video form on The Great Epoch Youtube Channel.

You can also follow us on Instagram @TheGreatEpoch for more.

Also visit our website www.TheGreatEpoch.com

Music By: Mark Patsavas

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

What do you think the wind speeds were?

SPEAKER_00 0:01

150 miles an hour. I'm trying to conserve my body heat, and the boat starts breaking up. The cabin was flooded, and I hear the the thrashing of helicopter blades. The sweetest sound I ever heard.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome back to Epic Stories. This is part two of an incredible interview with David Littlefield and Rebecca Van Fossen, who were forced out of their marina in Venice, Florida with their 44-foot Defever trawler as Major Hurricane Ian was charging toward the west coast of Florida. With forecast predicting a Tampa Bay area landfall, David single-handed the vessel southward to avoid the worst, only to find himself in a deadly situation as Ian made a last-minute jog southward, putting David all by himself in the eye of the storm. We pick up in the story just as things started to go south.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

There's no way.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Yeah, but nobody was complaining. Nobody was complaining.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Exactly. That's the that's the caveat there. But then, you know, if if Rebecca, you went along, there might have been a problem, a graver outcome.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

I didn't have a heart, I would have given myself a heart of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

I I want you guys, and maybe Rebecca will find it. It was on my phone, but the phone went down with the ship. Um, the picture from the day before, the night before. You know the expression red at night, Sailor's to Light, Red in the Morning, Sailor Tight Light. Yeah, you sent me a beautiful sunset the night before. Of course. It's um Usepa Island. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Yeah, yeah. He had a little bit of charge on his phone, and he was texting me. And what did you say? You said it's it's really hard to find good help on a boat. I'm asking for a cocktail, and no one's here to bring me my cocktail. And um, that was his last night, on you know, other than the night that they rescued him. The very next night, he was in a hell of a shape.

SPEAKER_04 1:53

So had you already lost power at that point because your phone was dying the night before?

SPEAKER_00 1:56

You didn't well no, that night the generator worked fine, everything worked fine. The generator wouldn't start the next day.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

And you couldn't charge your phone, but you couldn't charge it.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

I had because I needed 120 volts to charge the phone. Did you was there an inverter on board? There was, but not something that I could hook the phone up to.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Because his phone I had a house, I had a house battery bank, but they weren't wired into the outlets or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

You needed the generator to recharge the house bank. Right, so the batteries were but the house bank was good for a couple, probably three days at a whack. Yeah. If you didn't run the the um generator. No, if you didn't run the air conditioner or the um refrigerator freezer, you know, you could go three days on the hook. Um, but of course that wouldn't keep your food from spoiling. So it's you know it's a it's a matter of choices with power consumption.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

You used a pad because your port was to because his port was bad, and so that once, I guess, you could have probably charged it if your port worked. I don't know, it was a mess.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

It was the day before I was at Usepa Island, and then I left and I went further south. I turned around, I went back north, and I pulled into this marina at Usepa Island, and it was private. Now are you from Usepa? Yeah, okay. So it's it's very exclusive, it's a small spread across from Cabbage Keys.

SPEAKER_04 3:17

Why did you do that though? Why'd you go south and then trying to charge his phone? Trying to charge a phone. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Using that or looking for a spot where I could, you know, I don't know. But yeah, I I was thinking charge the phone. So I went ashore. I docked first time, docked solo, single-handed, and that worked out pretty well. Um, especially if you come in from the upwind side.

SPEAKER_05 3:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

So I took my phone, I took my charger, and I went ashore, and there was like a fireman and one other guy from the marina, and everybody else was gone. It was a ghost town. Wow. And so I and before I even ran into another human, I had my phone, I had my charger, and I'm like looking around, looking around, and there's a restroom. I went into the restroom, I turned on the light, there's an outlet, I plugged it in and I started charging. I called Rebecca. I said, I'm on Use Up Island. You face it. I'm charging my phone. Right. So then they I was found out, you know, and the guy said, What are you doing here? And I said, Well, that's my boat out there parked, you know, you know, no evacuation order. So we went back and forth and back and forth. And said, We're out of here in about 20 minutes, and you are too.

SPEAKER_04 4:17

Is this the first time you realized that you were driving directly into the snow? No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

No, at that time, at that time it was still. It's coming your way. Okay. It was because I had the weather. Dave said, Let me watch the weather. Let me watch the weather. So we FaceTime, he he just said, Hold your phone up to the let me let me hear it, you know. Um, and that's what I did. And he's and he was sitting there looking at me, he's got his hat on that didn't make it through the storm, and he said, I gotta go. And that was the last, that would have been the last time.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

So I had a partial charge. I had a partial charge on the phone, and the guy said, We're out of here, you're out of here too. So I took my sad little charger and my phone went back on the boat, cast off, went and continued southbound.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Um and then went ended up in Pine Island Key at Pine Island Sound.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

And the wind's picking up, you know, and and the waves are picking up, and I went I'm southbound on the intercoastal, and I looked over to my right, and there was a catamaran sitting there on the hook. And I'm like, well, probably good holding ground. If this guy's local, he knows what he's doing.

SPEAKER_05 5:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

So I looked on the other side and I found the deepest water I could find. Got in there throughout the hook. I probably had 4,000 feet around the boat that had good water, and then of course, shoals elsewhere.

SPEAKER_04 5:36

So that's where you stayed then. You anchored there and you stayed there until Yeah, so it was it was the night.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

I guess it was the night before. I guess it was the night before. Yeah. And again, the wind's picking up.

SPEAKER_05 5:48

So I woke up at the 24th.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I woke up the next morning, hooked the anchor's still holding, seas are picking up, you know, or the wind blowing like like stink.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

And um You called one oh no, didn't you turn on your phone one time and you saw I said get out.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

I said I sent here's a pin on my phone.

SPEAKER_03 6:08

I hired it.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

I sent a pin on my phone. I said, This is where I am. My phone's going dead. But this is where I am. So she knew my location.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

And then of course, everything starts changing on the television.

SPEAKER_04 6:21

But he showed me some of the messages you two sent back and forth where you were like, I haven't spoken to him, and I know where he is, but I haven't heard from him. His phone is dead, and I remember the conversation back and forth, and I can't imagine you know what you were going through at the time.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Everybody, we're at the family house, we've got TVs on everywhere, and all you're seeing is the storm turning, and now they're changing the forecast, and it's going right for right now. You know, I've got the picture on my phone, and that's where he's and we can't, we're calling him, we're calling him, we're texting him. It's terrifying. We can't, yeah, we can't get through. It's just going to voicemail. And um, and then you know, he finally, I think you texted me or you called. I think you texted, I don't remember. Yeah, I think it was just text. And I and I said, get out, get out, you know, uh it's coming straight for you. And um, he didn't have a television or anything.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

He didn't have all he had was I did too, just didn't get any channels.

SPEAKER_04 7:19

Where how can you get out? I mean, you can't you can't go that fast in the boat, you can't turn it around and see what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

There's no getting out, but other than getting somebody to come get you the somehow.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

But I mean, the the old sailors um mantra, stick with the boat. Yeah, that's what you do. You did.

SPEAKER_04 7:35

We saw, I mean, we saw that.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Well, I didn't I didn't stick with the boat until the bitter end. I stuck with the boat until the Coast Guard showed.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Yeah, yeah, and and so yeah, when the storm started to make that turn, Rebecca and I are messaging on Instagram Messenger, and she's saying you were headed southward, and your cell phone was dying, the generator was having issues, and she sent me that pinpoint on the map of where you were. And you were right behind Sanibel Captiva in Pine Island Sound, ground zero, and I'm thinking, oh my god, he's going to be gonna be in the deep gym. He's gonna be seeing the worst of this major hurricane. And even up here in uh St. Petersburg, we're getting 70 mile per hour gusts. Yeah, we're blowing pretty good. So um, so your their anchor, what kind of anchor do you have and how much chain did you put out? Haranka. Rakna? Rakna? Yep, that's what we have on this.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Probably 75 pound.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Yeah, same anchor.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, you know, we've been like, what's what's that one? The um where the pilots for Tampa Bay, the little island there, starts with a knee, Higma. Yeah, we were there one night. We were on the east side of the island, but it blown pretty good. We had the the parabane things that you know keep the flopper stopper. Yeah, and um, so you know, that it's a good holding anchor.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

It is. I've used that 73-pound anchor has been amazing. It it you don't have to put out much scope for it to hold really good.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

So, and I I well, okay, we'll get to that. Yeah, because I had plenty of scope out, didn't do any good. Um so woke up, nine o'clock, eight o'clock, boats rocking, the winds picking up, the waves.

SPEAKER_04 9:13

This is the next morning, the 29th.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

This is the the 29th. This is the 28th.

unknown 9:18

28th, okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

So anyway, I woke up, I fixed a cup of coffee. I'm kind of looking around, and we haven't slipped. I looked on the moving map. We're still, you know, the anchor watch, we're I was still right where I put out the hook. And um, but the boat's rocking pretty good, so I had a couple cups of coffee, and I'm like, okay. So sitting there thinking, fat, dumb, and happy, you know, I could lay out some more scope if I had to. I had a spare anchor, a big fortress made out of aluminum. I assembled that the night before.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

You still don't know where the storm is, though, do you?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

I no, I don't. So I assembled that the night before. I had it on deck so that I could deploy it if I needed to. And I should have deployed it anyway, just put it out there before the fact. Um, but that's all hindsight. So anyway, I'm like, okay, but things aren't looking good. I mean, the gray sky, and you know, I knew what the the storm search was gonna be. They were talking, you know, 12 to 20 feet, and I was in eight feet of water, and I'm like, okay. So the anchor drugged, and I was pushed onto the shoals, um, and the boat's fine. Sitting there, I'm on the bottom, everything's good. You tried it a little after it. I was I was I tried to start the engines to try and come back off and get, you know, float again. Couldn't get off. And I figured that, you know, I'm being pounded by the wind and waves, and of course the wave goes up, it goes down, you're not gonna get off like that. You know, you you need calm water and high tide to refloat. So um a little after 10 o'clock, I'm sitting in a cabin, I'm sitting right there where you are, and um the wind's howling. The boat, due to hurricane force, wind and waves, rolls 90 degrees. I'm thrown across the cabin. I hit the this what ends up being this well, the starboard side, but we have in the engine room, you have that big opening where the air comes in, and guess what? Air comes in, so can water. And so when the boat rolled like that, the floorboards, the table, everything that wasn't battened down, it's sitting over there, and now that's the floor.

SPEAKER_04 11:37

Were you pinned at any point?

SPEAKER_00 11:39

I I was thrown across. I ended up getting some cuts and bruises, bruises and contusions. Um, and I was like, whoa. And it didn't must be arcane.

SPEAKER_03 11:51

And in a second, and what we I mean, we had a marble table R set with this big planet marble up and down. Yeah, and uh it was so heavy, it would take both of us to try to just move it at all. Um, and it you said to me, it just picked it up like it was nothing.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Everything, the floorboards, and so now the engine room's exposed, and I'm looking at I'm looking at the air inlet and water's rushing in. Your floor is and I went to the electrical panel and I'm like, all the all the frickin' bilge pumps, no way in hell. Yeah. Hell, even a three-inch Coast Guard pump probably wouldn't have wouldn't have taken care of the problem at that point. Um, and the boat rolled 90, and then when it came back to try and write itself, it came back to about 30 degrees of starboard list. And again, the water flooding in, and I'm watching, you know, the engine room flood and one thing after another. Oh that's the um network had some had had the Santhrax inverter down in the engine room. All of a sudden the water comes over it. Now I've got toxic smoke in the cabin, and both the egress uh you know, the the starboard door and then the one onto the the F deck were um both blocked by water, and the water's coming up, and I'm like, I'm sitting here and I'm like, this is not good. Um, I felt like calling on Maverick to do some of that pilot stuff. Um he's got that little red thing there too. That's his little indicator. Oh, yeah, yeah. Tell us. So anyway, um, I'm like, this is not good. Then I'm like, okay, and I'm sitting there in my briefs, and I had a t-shirt on, I was barefoot, um, and the e-perb was up on the flybridge, and it would have you know break loose and float away, but we won we didn't sink, so that's not gonna happen. So I had a I had an e-perb for the dinghy, and we had a little go box. Had a little go box. Ditch bag, yeah, ditch bag. Well, or it had the ignition, it had a spare park plug, yeah, it had paper chart, little GPS actually like your backpack thing. Yeah, yeah, and it's a go bag basically. Yeah, but I mean you would take it with you if you were to launch the dinghy, you'd take that with you.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Yeah, that's what he always says, and I was always confused about it, but this makes a lot of sense now.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

So grab it quick, you're good to go. So, anyway, I I got the e-perb for the dinghy, and I'm like, well, we're not getting out of here. So uh the my VHF radio was sitting at the helm station in the salon, and I, you know, I like made it, made a made, less of Pearl, um, and I couldn't establish communications.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

You had a good radio, you're a ham operator, so you had a really good Yeah, you did flight uh traffic control, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:36

So you've got you know your way around a radio.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah, I had I had the radio figured up. He had all his on board. I don't know how many of you are radio geeks, but if you know anything about propagation, when you have um a 109-inch whip antenna for your VHF, um the the the pattern it radiates looks like an infinity signal. So go to the top of the antenna and then draw that infinity signal, and that's the way the signal goes out, and it goes out in 360 degrees. But if you roll the boat this way, one of those things is going up in the air, and the other one's going into the water about 12 feet from the air.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

So anyway, I'm like Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, and I can hear the Coast Guard, but I'm not sure they can hear me. So I was like Elizabeth Pearl, gave my let long, and I said, Um, you know, we're aground, taking on water, one person on board, um, the basic stuff that you transmit with an emergency Mayday message, and I got nothing back. And so I wasn't sure they heard me. And then I'm hearing them say security, security, security. There's a hurricane coming. I'm like, hey, no shit, Sherlock. I can give you a uh an up-to-date, you know, if you want, we're we're right here, you know, and I can tell you what's going on. There's a hurricane. So anyway, that a couple more tries on the radio, and I finally said, screw it, I turn on the ePERB. And now I'm thinking, okay, um, I gotta make a plan. We, you know, the boat is not going anywhere. If I stay with the boat and I get a 20-foot storm surge, the cabin's gonna fill with water. Yeah, I can't get out the doors. I think that window opened. Yeah, some of them do.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Or slid.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Yeah, it was a slider. But I couldn't really get to it because, like I said, everything was down here, and now we got water, we got some oil from the engine room, everything's slippery, I can't get a foothold. So I'm like, okay, you gotta you gotta you gotta do something, you gotta put a plan on. And you're not 26 anymore. No, I'm not.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

And he's got back the same back issues that he just had his surgery spawn.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

So I put on a life jacket.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

He had then.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

I grab my little e-perb and I turn it on, and then I start thinking, here's a bottle of wine, right? And I can I can either comfort myself with the alcoholic content or I can use this for water. So I got my little bottle of wine here, and I start putting it all in the galley sink. Well, uh, let me take that back. I'm sitting where you are in the salon, and like I said, the boat is rolled over, and I am having trouble with footing, I'm having trouble with hand holds. I figure if one's good, two's better. So I put on a second life jacket, and then I start collecting. I got a little breakfast bar, and I stick that right here like this, you know. And then I'm like, okay, uh, in my in my in my go bag, I've got um an electronic strobe. But it looks like a flashlight, but it so I stick that in here. Like, so when I'm starting to stuff my life jackets full of survival gear, I grab a couple of boat cushions and I figure, what the hell? You know, if two's good, four's better. I ended up with three of the boat cushions, and usually we'd put them in the dinghy when we would take the dinghy out. So I got the boat cushions, I got a bottle that I can either drink the wine or use it as a canteen. Or both. Um, yeah, or both. And then, you know, I got a package of pretzels, and I'm so now I'm like, okay, now I I gotta get out. I but and I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I know that I can't stay here. I can wait till the water fills the cabin and I can try and get out that window. Or I could work my way from here in the salon back to there. So think about the boat being over about like this. This the floorboards are gone, so I'd have to be on the stringers. So I end up getting on top of the woodwork and I start working my way back. It's slippery, I'm having trouble with foot and hand holds. So then I climb over the galley counter and I end up back here, and then like, okay, so then I take all my stuff and I start loading it into the galley sink. So I got my sad little bottle of this much wine left. I got, you know, my life jackets on, I got my e-perb, um, a bag of chips or pretzels or whatever the hell they were, and I'm like, okay, and this for those of you who don't know, there's a pass-through window here that opens halfway. So I'm like, I'm a pretty big guy, I'm wearing two life jackets, I can't fit out that damn window. So, and I'm sitting here and I'm trying to figure out, you know, something's gotta happen. And I'm not sure what it's gonna be, but um I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, I'm right now I'm not in any mortal danger. Turn the e-perb on, I've sent out my May Day. If anybody's gonna know that I'm in trouble, I've done everything I can. And um, now the question is, how do I get out of the salon? How do I get out of the cabin? And I'm like, that's the only way out, unless I wait for the cabin, the water to come up, and I can try and get out this window.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

And this boat has a 15-foot beam, so and you know, it draws four and a half UR. So it's even on its side, there's still a lot of uh area to traverse. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

So I worked my way over there, and it probably took me an hour, maybe an hour and a half, just to go from here to there.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

Um because the boat's still rocking at that point, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:55

The wind? It's not really rocking, but it's filling with water.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

Um how fast was it filling? Was it was it where was it up to?

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Like, hard to say. Well, it's it covered the generator, then it covered the starboard engine, then it took out the inverter, then it took out covered the port engine, and it just continued to keep coming up.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Did it get it, did it get up into the salon?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Over on this side. Yeah. On the the down water side. It was the starboard side, it was it was starting to fill the cabin. And um, you know, again, I I don't know how deep into the 20-foot storm surge we were, because I really had no idea what was going on. So I ended up back by the window and I'm trying to make that work, and I don't know. I it I ended up the I ended up breaking the window. Um, I don't know if I couldn't get it open or if it would come down, but then it, you know, when they overlap, they come down like this. Yeah, so it's double. And I was like, I wanted it like that so that I could try and get my fat ass out. Um, so I it was like, this it's not gonna work because I'm wearing these life jackets. So I said, I gotta take the life jackets off to get out the window. So I took my life jackets off and I'm like, okay, I I gotta get out. I want to take all the stuff in the sink along with all whatever I got that I'm gonna keep with me and get it out on deck. And the reason that I chose to do that was all of a sudden, God, no wind, no waves, no nothing. And it occurred to me after the fact it was the eye of the hurricane, but it didn't occur to me at the time. But I thought, if there was a time to go, now's the time. So 2:30 in the afternoon, I end up outside, and um, you know, I take my life jackets off, I put them outside. I was worried they might like float away, blow away. So I get my fat ass outside. I think I got a couple of cuts from the broken glass. Um, but I'm out on deck, and now I got I want to get my water, I want to get my bottle of wine, I want to get my life jackets back. On. I want to get my three boat cushions. And so I'm out on deck, and very shortly after the blue skies and the no wind and waves, the backside of the hurricane shows up.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

And so what was before you got into the eye? What was the experience on board as far as hearing the winds, the sounds?

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Oh, it was, you know, people say it sounded like a freight train. Um you eventually it's almost like you had an internal volume control and you'd kind of tune that out.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

I was wondering about that.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Because it's not helping you, and you know, potentially you could panic or it could paralyze you, and you know, you're just like, oh, I'm you know, I'm gonna drown.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

It's your fight or flight response at that point.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

So, and interestingly enough, I had um in as an air traffic controller, um, I had a chance to um it's a long story, I'm not gonna bore you with that. It's another wonderful story. We'll do another YouTube video. There we go. So I I had as a civilian, I had done water survival with the Navy. And they're they're pretty serious about that. They, if you're a a fighter pilot and you're and you're gonna fly in the Navy, you have to do this water survival. If you don't successfully complete it, then you're not gonna fly for the Navy anymore. You're done as a carrier-based pilot. So anyway, I'd gone through that. They did the um the heat lessening position, heat exhaustion listening position. It's a help thing, H E L P, it's an acronym. And it's about how to contain the heat in your body so that you don't get hypothermia. Um, so they did, you know, how to float in the water and you know, you can survive for 24 hours, on and on and on. So I was kind of fallen back on that experience about you know what to do now, and I'm out on deck, and the backside of the hurricane is now upon me. And so I moved around to the upwind side, and the one that was maybe the highest out of the water, and it was ended at where the little step is from the aft deck to the side walkway that goes forward. And so I'm standing there, and I guess I had a piece of coax that the wind was whipping around, kept hitting me. So I took out my trusty knife, I cut that thing, and so I'm standing there, and I'm like, I'm exposed to the wind and the waves, and it was kind of interesting, you know, in hindsight, because the water's warm. And so you end up with this warm water, but then the wind kicks in, and now I'm wearing a t-shirt and briefs, and I finally put some shoes on before I got out of there. Wearing my life jackets, and I'm getting chilled from the wind.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

And it's torrential rain, I imagine, as well in the eye wall.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

And so I end up thinking I'm I'm gonna scoot down a little bit and get a little more protection. And so, you know, my eyes were about right where the um whatever they call those boards to keep you from falling overboard. Oh, yeah. So I could kind of see out right there, and I got my my boat cushions, I got one between my legs, I got one on either side, and I'm trying to conserve my body heat, and um the boat starts breaking up, and you talk about just uh heart-rending to be on board your ship, and it's disintegrating around you. You know, um the cabin was flooded. Here go here's the and that cabin door uh that was closed, I couldn't get out, now got jarred open by a wave, and every time a wave would come through, bam! Bam! So the door is smacking open and closed. Every time it would open, something would come floating out, a cooler, um, your spice rack.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Pieces of our license.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Yeah. And I it would come out, then it would float around on the F deck and then be carried away.

SPEAKER_03 26:03

We had a you know the the the back deck was so beautiful. We had this furniture out there, we had a beautiful rock, we had all the heat table, our little wagon that we would bring stuff out to the boat on, all this stuff. He'd just have to watch it.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Throw it away. And not not just floating away, but the stuff would come out the whole thing. And it would, I'm sitting now on that little step, and I got my life jacket, I'm trying to conserve my body heat. I would get a wave would come on and come crashing through, and the door would bang, you know, with a big crash, and then the wave would hit me from behind this high or higher, and it was nice warm water. I'm like, ah, that's nice warm water, that feels good. And then, of course, the wave would recede and the wind would chill me. Yeah, then I'm sitting there and a frickin' wave would come around this side of the boat, around the bow, and come down this side, hit me in the face. So now I'm sitting there, and I don't know if you've been exposed to salt water with your eyes for a long time, but um, it's not pleasant. And so I I ended up as the boat and stuff was hitting me. The stuff that would had would was breaking up the boat would hit me in the back, which turns out in the hospital they laid me down on my back, nobody checked my back. And I I saw it the next day. My back was bruised from stuff smashing into me from the wind and the waves. So, anyway, what do you think the wind speeds were? 150 miles an hour, just below cat five.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

And you've got rain pelting you, you've got waves pelting you, salt water hitting me.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

So I ended up sitting on that step and I'm looking there now, and now it's past 2:30, 3 o'clock, and this the backside comes through, and I'm like, Well shit, by about 7 o'clock, 7.30, it's gonna get dark. I said, I'm I'm an aviator. I said, I wouldn't fly in this shit. I put out the signal on the radio in the EPER, but even if the Coast Guard got it, they're sitting there fat, dumb, and happy in a nice warm building. And I can't expect any kind of help from them until it's after the fact. Um, so I'm and I'm sitting there, I look at my watch, and I'm like, three o'clock.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

I said And it's three o'clock in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, it's gonna be dark by seven, it's gonna be light by seven a.m. And I said, so that's 12, that's 16 hours.

SPEAKER_04 28:17

And I was like, And you're already cold because of the wind. Yeah. I feel like you'd be in shock at that point because you're getting warm and then cold again.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

I imagine you haven't been nourishing yourself that much as well. No, well, I had dinner the night before, but no breakfast other than coffee. So your your energy reserves have been well, it's amazing what what your body will provide.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

So um, I'm like, okay, I can do this for 16 hours. I wasn't sure I could, but I told myself I could. So I'm sitting there trying to keep my core temperature up, the boat's breaking up, I'm getting pummeled by stuff that's hitting me in the back, waves are hitting me both from the front and the back. The you know, the cabin door keeps slamming, and my eyes, like I said, were had been um, they just didn't feel real good because of all the salt water in the wind. And so I just sat there and I closed my eyes. I'm like, oh, that feels much better. So then I was like, okay, sitting there, and I'm like, surely an hour's gone by. I looked at my watch, 12 minutes. Oh no, that's the longest minute in your life, yeah. So I was like, 16 hours and 12 minutes. I said, Whoa. All right. So I don't really know what happened, maybe a moment of um inattention, and all of a sudden I didn't have three boat cushions, I only had one.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

You might have fallen.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

And I was I was using those to keep my body heat in, and so now I only have one poor little boat cushion, so I'm clinging to that between my legs, and you know, wondering, okay, and so it gets dark, which is kind of spooky in itself because now you got all these sounds but no visual.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

When's the last time at this point that you two had spoken? The date the day.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

The night before.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

Yeah. I mean, we had the well we had when he was we FaceTime and he said, Show me the weather, just show me the TV.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

And so that was that was the morning before.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

But I like I said, he had texted, I think he texted and we said, because I remember running out, I had been just holed up. I couldn't watch the TVs anymore. I went in the room, one of the room I was sitting in with my with the dog was in there and one of my grandchildren. And um, all of a sudden my phone beeps and it's a text message from Dave. And I ran out, he texted, he texted. This was, of course, earlier in the day before, and he said, I think you had said everything's okay. And that's when I said, get out, you know, because I I didn't think you even knew that the hurricane was coming his way, but at least we knew he was alive. So that was one thing the Coast Guard wanted to know. When's the last time that you talked to him? Or and that would have been that text message earlier.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

So so we're just coming up now on the Coast Guard.

SPEAKER_03 31:06

And I think you told me that you had sent that text maybe right before the boat uh listed.

SPEAKER_04 31:13

I think that's after. That would make sense if he said everything's okay.

SPEAKER_03 31:16

Yeah, I mean everything was okay, but I think he he kind of said everything went.

SPEAKER_04 31:20

So that was that morning then.

SPEAKER_03 31:22

Then it must have been. When did whenever the boat listed, obviously the morning was the text. Yeah. Okay. So it had been probably 12 hours at that point because it was on the day before, I guess, when he was making his way down there. Yeah. When we FaceTime that's a long gap of time for you to do that. Yeah, but I mean you had faith in him. I I still had faith in him. I didn't know at that point that the because we were getting out of we we evacuated our home in Nekomis and my daughter's home in Sarasota to go to family down in Fort Lauderdale because the hurricane was going to hit us. Yeah. So the only reason we trekked with the dogs, like she has a huge dog, and I have a little dog, but not a real small dog, but and two grandchildren. I mean, the only reason we put ourselves through that was to get out of the hurricane. They didn't want me to stay by myself in the house and Nicomas, and they they were kind of like, well, mom, we can either do this or um or we we just go down to Fort Lauderdale. And so we went to her her dad's house, and he's a retired Miami firefighter paramedic who went through Andrew back in '94.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

I think it was 1994, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, and he said, get out of there. I've already been through a storm like that. Do not stay in there. You guys are coming to my house. So that's what we did. We listened to him. I mean, he called me and convinced me. He said, You've got to get out of there. You cannot stay there by yourself. If this is a cat five or whatever they were thinking, um, and it's coming towards you, then you gotta get out of there. Well, then the storm decides to turn east sooner. And when we were driving down there, it would normally take us about three hours to Fort Lauderdale, and maybe it took us over six. I mean, it was so, it was so, it was terrible. Our phones were going off with tornado warnings and um our watches were going off too. We were trying to sing like kumbaya to the grandchildren because everything's fine. We're just driving, everything's fine, and then blah, blah, blah, you know, bing, bing. They're probably they were so what's that sound? What's that sound? It was so crazy. But we were driving across Alligator Alley, it's pitch black by now because we're trying to, but that's when the storm and he's already out there. There's nothing I can do. Um, we can't even get in touch with them. Um, and so then you go ahead with your story.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

So you're uh Well, actually, I'm gonna turn it back over to you because I had turned on the e-perb, sent out the Mayday on the VHF, and then you get a call.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

We get a call. So I'm on the phone. First of all, the phone my phone was ringing off the hook with family members.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

Hang on for one sec. Should we go back and explain about uh the 406 e-perbs and that you register them? And it used to be that um they were on a different frequency and they weren't specific to you, they were very generic. But the latest iteration of e-perbs, you register, you put your name on it, you put your contacts name, you have phone numbers. Now the Coast Guard knows who's in trouble, they know where they are, and they can pinpoint their position to within GPS accuracy, which is real, real good.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

And they can start calling whoever's on the emergency conversation.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

And so that's what happened.

SPEAKER_03 34:37

Yes, so I'm on the phone talking to who knows who, trying to update.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Yeah, petty pet petty officer Smith.

SPEAKER_03 34:43

Every no, no, no, no. They hadn't contacted me yet. So I'm on the phone talking to whoever on the phone, and the phone gets a beep that somebody's trying to beep in. I don't recognize the number, I don't answer it. And a few minutes later, my daughter, who was the next one, because we all we had listed my, you know, my name, Dave's name, or whatever, and then my daughter's name because if we were out together, they would need to contact her. And so she comes walking in the room. Why is the sheep? And she said, The Coast Guard, Mom is the Coast Guard. Oh my goodness. And I said, Oh, oh, Eddie, I gotta call you back, you know, hang up. Grab the phone, and they say, We, you know, we've got this e-perb going off or a boat named Dink. Dink is the dinghy.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

Oh, the dinghy's e-perb.

SPEAKER_03 35:30

Right. And I said, they said, Well, we're getting these e-perbs going off all over the area. It's probably nothing. Um, it's probably if oh, and I said, that's the the dinghy. And uh, he said, Well, it'll probably it's probably going off because it's the boat gets wet. The boat's been exposed, you know. We're they wanted to know all about Dave, of course, first, but they said, you know, it might not be an alarming situation because it could be that it just was out there, it got exposed. He said, ma'am, we have got these things going off all over.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Yeah, I've had my e-perb, I've set it off to the side one time just doing some maintenance on the boat, and I forgot about it, and it sat in a puddle. Yeah and it it activated it.

SPEAKER_03 36:09

Yeah. Because they couldn't go and rescue anyone at that time, they wanted to know a real e-perb or a f or just a fake one, a bad one.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:17

You know, one that just went off on its own. And so I told the the fella, I said, Well, we didn't keep the e-perb on the dinghy. The dinghy might be exposed to water, but we kept it in the salon. That's that's where I knew in our bag. And I said, If if it's going off, it was activated. I just knew it. Because I knew that's where, you know, Dave tried to keep everything from getting wet. We had GPS in there and everything. And so um then I start thinking, holy crap, what's going on? You know, why would he activate it? He has to be in trouble, but there's no way to know. And so they say, Okay, we're gonna treat it as an active, you know, e-perv or an active signal, and um, we'll let you know. So then I said, before the guy hung up, I said, Can we can we mayday him? He he knows his way around the radio. I, you know, have you heard any Maydays? That's what I think I asked that that too. And they said, Well, we gotta put you in chuck uh in touch with a different department, and this is the phone number. We're gonna tie we'll and the guy was really helpful. He tried to call the other place and you know, do three three callers or whatever, and turn me over to this person, a female lady.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

So so so just to explain this a little further, the radio room for the Coast Guard was not co-located with the guy calling about the epoch two different departments.

SPEAKER_04 37:37

Which is incredible on your part to even know to ask that question. Have you mayday him? Have you reached out? I mean, yeah, I I wouldn't have known to ask that question.

SPEAKER_03 37:44

I feel like that. Well, I just knew that he always had, you know, I always said, what happens if you have a heart attack on this boat? I don't know what to do. I need to know, you know, can I I couldn't have operated this boat or a sailboat for any matter, you know, by myself. I just needed I always was worried about that. What if I was left alone on the boat and you know, what would I do? And he he told me, I think we even had a little, didn't you have a little chart or a little thing up? Probably it said this is the the radio, you have to dial it to this to the station, and this is what you do.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Here's a GPS lat long, channel 16.

SPEAKER_04 38:16

Right. That just shows the importance of the practicing of the safety issues and get whoever if you are buying a emergency drills, yeah, do it to a point where you are practicing the safety at all times because it kicks into gear.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

A little off track. Do you do man overboard drills?

SPEAKER_02 38:30

You know, um, we should, and that's and and I think that that's a very important thing to bring up because a lot of people just kind of cast that aside, so it's not we're not gonna have to deal with that ever. Yeah, and you don't know how to operate when you get into an emergency situation like that and reduce visibility, whatever. And so it is very important to do man overboard drills so you know exactly what to do if that unfortunate circumstance occurs.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

And where your life changes are and how to get to them quickly. Let me expand on that just a little bit. Back when we had small sailboat, um, my wife, myself, and uh a young child, our our daughter, um my wife was concerned, what if Stephanie falls in? And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna tell you, this is where the way it's gonna go. You're gonna want to jump in after her to save her. But the problem there is that now I'm fixed with the responsibility of rescuing two people by myself as opposed to rescuing one person with two of us, right? But when you, you know, it's an emotional response.

SPEAKER_04 39:39

That's a good point, because as a mother, I would I would jump in.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

And that's the whole wrong thing to do. Yeah, yeah. You know, what you want to do is get a man overboard pole, get a life preserver of some PFD of some sort, get that out to them. Um, you know, uh, one of those horseshoe buoys or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Yeah, right. Yeah, life range.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

You're driving the boat, you keep your eye on the victim and point to them. Yeah, circle back around. But again, you got to practice this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:06

And even your training, you were saying you did training back in the day. How like the gap of time from that training to this situation is probably extensive, but you still kicked in gear.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

Well, again, again, the navy stuff was more about water survival. All right. This is, you know, like if if you if it's a man overboard situation, it's survival for them, not so much for you. Right. Right. So, what what you have to do is you have to have the drill in place that you know, you you go to your GPS, you mark M O B, man overboard, right? Get the life PFD, get that out there. You keep an eye on the victim, yeah. Point to them the whole time, get the boat stopped, circle back around, you know, and you and you have to have a plan. Like on this boat, it's simple. You take them back in on the swim platform, yeah, right? Sailboat's a little bit different, they got a high freeboard all the way around. Um, you know, we had a stern ladder, but uh somebody who's in the water not gonna be able to climb up the damn ladder, right? So my deal was I had um a mast and a boom, and I had a block and tackle that I could put on the boom and I could hook it to you, and I could go a three-part block and tackle, and I could pick up me. I could probably pick myself up by pulling on the thing. And again, you know, it's with the pulley block and tackle. So anyway, you have to um you have to practice this stuff. It's like any if you want to be a conscientious boater, you want to be good as a helmsman, you want to be good as a navigator, you want to be good in an emergency, right? Which is what I find myself in um of my own making.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Um I believe there there used to be a course, there might still be with the Coast Guard Auxiliary. And and it was a it was a relatively short class, I believe. It was mainly for your first mate, your wife, partner, whatever. Yeah, and it was called suddenly you're in charge. And so it gives you uh the the information and teaching on how to deal with the situation if uh the captain has a uh heart attack or is incapacitated for whatever.

SPEAKER_03 42:02

Even a fall, they hit their head.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

They have a similar thing in aviation. And um, you're the pilot, you fly with your family, your wife sits in the co-pilot seat, and they called it the pinch hitter course. And so they would put you with a flight instructor. If you chose to avail yourself to this training, they'd put you in your own airplane, and then the instructor would sit where your husband would sit, or the pilot in command would sit, and then all of a sudden they'd say, Okay, uh, what are you gonna do? You know, he just keeled over from a heart attack, and now you're in charge of getting him, you, your kids, the airplane all back on the ground. And so they run through, you know, it's basically um how to land an airplane if you're not a pilot.

SPEAKER_05 42:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

So same thing, you know, in another field, aviation instead of boating, but it's the same kind of thing. You know, something that just popped into my head is uh it's an aviation thing. You usually see it up on the wall in a hanger, and it it shows this biplane from World War I into a tree, crashed all crumpled, and it says, even more than the sea, aviation is unforgiving of stupid stuff.

SPEAKER_03 43:13

Um Yeah, that Mother Nature. But anyway, so so they they put me through to the people who can do May Day signals, the Coast Guard.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

The radio room.

SPEAKER_03 43:24

Yeah, I guess in Tampa. I think it might have been in Tampa or Clearwater or where I think it was Tampa. And they said they would send out a they had not received anything from Dave, um, but they would um send one out for one hour, they would hail him by radio and try to see if there would be any answer. So they said they would not be able to call me back because they had so much so much going on. But if I would just call them back in an hour, so you know that's what I did. And they said they had tried however many times and they had received nothing.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

Yeah, so they were probably putting out a uh a pon.

SPEAKER_03 43:57

Yeah, I don't I don't know. But even if it if Even if his radio was working back to it. He wasn't he wasn't even in the cabin at that point of the salon at that point.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

So he didn't hear it. One of the assumptions that they made when the ePERB went off because it was registered to the the dinghy. Was that could Captain Dave have launched the dinghy?

SPEAKER_03 44:17

Oh yeah, that is one thing. And I said there was no way because it took two of us to in calm seas to launch our dinghy.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

What do you have here? You you you have a boom and a winch?

SPEAKER_02 44:28

Yeah, I have a yeah, I have a uh dabit with a winch. Twelve volt? Yep. Yeah, that's what we have to see. You don't have the power to do it.

SPEAKER_04 44:36

Your eperp was in the bag, not on the dinghy.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Well, actually, it was it was on my person now.

SPEAKER_03 44:40

Right. Yeah, it was on this person. But that but she knew there in first well that when they said could he have just launched the dinghy by himself? And I said, absolutely not. I guess they kind of wanted to know is he on board or is he in a dinghy? You know, what are we gonna do? Is he moving or high?

SPEAKER_00 44:55

And again, and again, no conclusive answer to that question. A good question. Yeah, but you know, again, we talked about earlier, stay with the boat.

SPEAKER_03 45:03

Yeah, they were trying to gather I didn't want to be in the water.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

I didn't want to be in the dinghy. I didn't really want to be on board the defever at that point. Um, but obviously, you know, again, stick with the boat, stick with the boat. Um, do you remember that thing with the two kids that were fishing on the Atlantic side?

SPEAKER_02 45:19

Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

You know, they went out Boston whaler.

SPEAKER_02 45:22

That was when there was a big uh campaign with uh advertising about e burst.

SPEAKER_03 45:27

Yeah, they went out Jupiter Inlet, right? Yeah, south of my house.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Um and and again, stick with the boat. They found the boat. They found it three months later. I don't think they could have survived that long. No, it was awful. You know, the boat was still afloat.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

If they'd had the but they weren't on the boat, it'd gone, never to be seen again. No, and they were they they knew what they were doing.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

Well, they they'd done it a lot.

SPEAKER_03 45:48

Yeah, but anyway, so they so at at some point, you know, I had the phone number for who to call with the Coast Guard, and they were calling me. They were in contact, and at some point they said, We we probably will not get out there to look for him until first first yeah, first light. And I forget how you know what time this was. It was late in the evening, but it wasn't like the overnight, it was still prior to like midnight, I think. But they said it'll be up to the discretion of the pilot, uh, you know, to what time, but really we you know, we can't put them in harm's way and whatever, but we want to make sure, you know, you have you heard anything no, when's the last time you heard from them? They wanted to know the exact, you know, everything that I could provide. So I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

And I had sent on my phone when I pinned it. Yeah. And with that long right off the GPS. I said, This is my position.

SPEAKER_03 46:39

So I had to go over that with them. You know, I said, I don't know exactly how to even read it. I didn't know how to accurately read it. I just said, this is what, you know, I think I either sent it to him or took a screenshot of it or whatever, because I wanted to make sure that whatever I said to him was I was conveying the exact there's a way you you you say those those words, and I didn't know exactly how to say them.

SPEAKER_00 47:01

And you should know how.

SPEAKER_03 47:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:03

Now that you know, but yeah, but I mean that's still learning, it's still a learning process. And then we've just sold the boat, but we've been he's been telling me he wants me to take the suddenly I'm in charge. Um that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Yeah, well, and and you know, the same thing when we had the boat, I I was telling Rebecca, I said, you know, let's assume that your worst fear comes true. All right, so take the helm. And she was and still is reluctant to do so.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Um but you know, that's it is it yeah, it it can definitely be a little overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

Yeah, I bet you you know, if the first time you drove a frickin' boat other than your 14-foot fishing skiff, it was bigger than that. Make it 27 foot. I this was this is twice as long. Mine was a skin and it don't have an outboard.

SPEAKER_03 47:47

It was a fishing boat, but yeah, it had one engine and an old Johnson. But anyway, um Hey, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

Old Johnson. Can we say that? I could have to believe that.

SPEAKER_03 47:58

Yeah. Uh anyway, so um, so that was it until um until I guess you know, I'd spoke to the Coast Guard again at like one o'clock in the morning. You know, nothing new, nothing new, whatever. The storm's going on, and then I must have fallen asleep, but I kept waking, you know, like looking at my phone. That's 10 hours since you've been. Yeah, probably, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 48:20

It's three o'clock and then one at 1 a.m.

SPEAKER_03 48:23

But at around three o'clock in the morning, maybe 3 30, I had looked at my phone again and either gone to the bathroom or came back, and my and I missed a call.

SPEAKER_00 48:32

And were the number you didn't recognize?

SPEAKER_03 48:34

No, I missed a call, and there was a voicemail, and I still have the voicemail. It was the nurse calling, and we have Dave here. Oh, he's already in the hospital at this point. Yes, so it wasn't even light outside. Wasn't even light outside. They had made the decision. The Clearwater Coast Guard was in Palm Beach, and they decided that they would fly over, and if the winds were not um too strong, they would try to start rescuing people with the idea that the captain would, if it was too strong, they were gonna turn around and go back at to Palm Beach.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

And um we found that we found out about this after the fact. Yeah, we didn't know that they'd evacuated.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Um Yeah, we didn't know, and we didn't know about his his decision to leave before first light. I guess there were so many people out there that were stranded um that they needed to try. And so they got over the ear, or to the east, you know, the the left coast, the west coast, and and they decided that they might be able to try to run.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

So a little background there. The um flight crews took their equipment, the helicopters, um, and they relocated out of harm's way. And so then the the decision was made when can we start what we need to do post-hurricane? And obviously with real strong winds, I mean the winds were stronger than the helicopter flies. Yeah, they could have been at full forward speed and been blown backwards, right? And so then the rain, the wind, you know, the visibility, many issues that come into play when you're the pilot in command and you have to make the decision, and they call it a go-no-go decision. Right. And the same thing a captain on a ship does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:17

So it was at 3:36 a.m. when and the and it was a lady named Katie. I'm a nurse over here at Coast Guard, and I'm Fort Myers, and I have your fiance here, Mr. Little Litchfield, she said. Okay, whatever. But anyway, yeah. So luckily they they went to the guy with the cardiac problems first.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Well, let's go back to the Coast Guard, just as a little background. Um, so the um the command structure evacuated with with the helicopters. So apparently, and again, I spoke with um the um commander of the Coast Guard base in in Clearwater after the fact, and he said, Yeah, we were over in Palm Beach and we were sitting there, when can we start affecting what we do after a disaster? And he was he met with the flight crew and they were like, Can we go? And they were like, not until the winds get below, and I forget what the threshold was, but they all agreed that at that point we could probably do some good. And so as the I guess I'm not gonna call, I'm not gonna say the winds abated, but as they became less strong, um, they said, we think we can do it. And and I think if my memory serves me correctly, the speed was it was it gets below 60 miles an hour on the wind. So now they're in saying in uh they're over on the Atlantic side, and they're like, okay, we're gonna go. So, and again it was the consensus of all the crew along with the base commander, and they're gonna fly back to their base in the clear water, and they get there after a two and a half, three-hour flight, and guess what? Helicopter needs gas. Because it's out. So they land there at St. Pete. There's no electricity. So your electric fuel pump? No. The runway lights? No. Nothing. You know, you basically what you have on board the helicopter is about it. Now the the captain's name was Captain Phi, I think, um, commander of Clearwater Coast Guard Station.

SPEAKER_03 52:28

At that time.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

He he he was he was at the base, and he told me, he said, I got out there with my vehicle and I illuminated the helipad with my headlights, talked to him, I guess, on a handheld radio, and the helicopter comes in, they land, they bring in a fuel truck, which is self-sufficient in terms of power. Right. So they topped off the um the helicopter and then launched on a rescue mission.

SPEAKER_03 52:52

Wow, I didn't even know that.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

And that's that was about it's about 100 miles or so from Clearwater to where you were, I imagine. That sounds about right.

SPEAKER_04 53:02

You were one of the first rescued, or do you the second?

SPEAKER_00 53:05

I didn't know that at the time, but as things played out, they rescued one guy and then I was second.

SPEAKER_04 53:10

Do you know how many total that day that they rescued?

SPEAKER_00 53:14

Oh, good golly. I think 170, 140, 170 people.

SPEAKER_03 53:18

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 53:19

Over the course of the rescue mission, which lasted for three or four days. That's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 53:23

But how many that day I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 53:24

I think they told us they just well again, you you can't put 144 people on a single helicopter. Yeah. So you gotta rescue somebody, rescue, and yeah, drop them off and then go back. Thanks for the same. Which is the Coast Guard.

SPEAKER_04 53:35

They can't consider all the services, I mean, they jumped into action and and that's I'm just gonna say this.

SPEAKER_00 53:41

Um, and this is no surprise to anybody who's listening, but my take on the Coast Guard went way up from how I felt before. Because before it was like, oh, we're boarding you, and we're gonna check your heads and make sure that they're going into a holding tank. Yeah, we're gonna count your life jackets, we're gonna make your life miserable, and guess what? If you fail, it's ten thousand dollar fine. Yeah, and I'm like, I don't even want you on board. Now I think they're the best people in the world.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 54:10

So the first guy they rescued had been um his his he was a live, he was a live aboard. He he was a live aboard, and the boat ended up in a tree.

SPEAKER_00 54:19

The the tidal surge, the storm surge took his boat out of his mooring and put him up in in a tree.

SPEAKER_04 54:26

In on top of a tree?

SPEAKER_00 54:27

Yeah, in a tree. Oh my and then as the water receded, uh the uh the chine, which is where the bottom of the boat meets the top of the boat, that's where that um you know what a chine is. Yeah, yeah. So um it separated because it was a shitty little boat. Yeah, and so he's up on the deck in the bottom of the boat and the engine and the salon and everything, it's like a 26-footer, small cabin cruiser. And so he's he's up there in like the whole bottom of the boat, not even there anymore. So he's hanging in this tree 20 feet in the air, and they came and they plucked him out.

SPEAKER_03 55:02

So they yeah, they got him first. He used to had cardiac issues, and then they got you.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

And and so now going on the Instagram, so no, he's on the Instagram.

SPEAKER_03 55:12

He's the guy in the back. He's the guy.

SPEAKER_00 55:14

Oh, he's in the helicopter. Oh, so he's in the helicopter. They identify him as a crew member on the helicopter, he is not.

SPEAKER_03 55:20

All right, Dennis identified him as a as a pilot, and he's the he's the first guy that lasts.

SPEAKER_00 55:26

So I'm sitting there and being smashed with wind and waves, and again, I got my eyes closed, and I'm like, and um again, I worked at, you know, I've been in aviation for quite decades, and I hear the the thrashing of helicopter blades. It's zero dark 30, and I'm like, hey, nice. And I as I said when somebody asked me, I said, the sweetest sound I ever heard. So I'm sitting there and I'm you can't really see me. And I got my e-perb, I know it's going, I can see the little red blinking light, and it's gotta be the Coast Guard. Nobody else will be stupid enough to be flying in that kind of crap. So, and I'm sitting there and you can't see me because I'm sitting down on the step, and I'm like thinking that you know, how the guys on the helicopter can see me, you know, when my head's not even above the handrail. And so here comes a helicopter, and they approach my position, and I'm thinking, cool, the cavalry's arrived. And then they leave. Oh my god. They depart. And I'm like, well, that sucks. Maybe I'm not the most important thing on their agenda at this point, and they prioritize, and I'm not at the top of the list. Come to find out, their protocol for a rescue is that once they arrive on site, they perform basically a search pattern in the shape of a pie. Like when you slice a pie into six segments. And so what they're doing is they're checking for obstructions, they're checking for power lines, they're checking for something that might thwart whatever rescue that they decide they're gonna do. And so they fly this pie-shaped pattern, and it takes a while. And so seven, ten minutes later, I hear the helicopter again, and they set up a hover 100 yards from my position, basket comes down, here comes the rescue swimmer, Jethro. Um Jethro.

SPEAKER_04 57:33

Now, are they talking to you? Like so you don't know, you just know that the basket dropped and he's coming down, but they're not saying didn't you use your strobe?

SPEAKER_00 57:43

No, yeah. I I'm sorry. When they came back the second time, I was more mentally acute. And um, you know, when when they were approaching, I took out my little flashlight battery strobe light, and I'm like, over here, over here.

SPEAKER_03 57:56

But that had to help.

SPEAKER_00 57:57

Oh, that helped out. You know, now they still had the e-perb, so they knew that, you know, but again, the e-perv could float away. Right. You know, they didn't know that it was attached to me.

SPEAKER_03 58:06

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 58:07

So anyway, obviously somebody flashing the strobe light, you know, is a pretty good idea that hey, there he is. So the rescue basket comes down, and I'm like, okay, um, I have I'm getting off the boat. And Jethro came around on the the upwind side, which was the side of the boat starboard side that was submerged, climbed over the rail, climbs up, and I at this point got up off the step and I moved forward to about where your salon door is. And he came up around there and we met, and he said the first thing I said was thank you. I don't really remember what the first thing I said was. Um, hi, my name's Dave. I'm glad to meet you. Um something, you know, and again, I'll take his word for it. Um, but I was like, oh, this is cool. I work, we're the Coast Guards here. The Calvary has arrived. So again, wind's still whipping, the rain's coming down, the waves are probably 10, 12 feet, and I had some dock lines that I had lashed up near the bow pulpit, and he I don't know if he took out his knife because I had tied it with um pretty good sailor's knot, and he was like, Wheep, and tied it around the rail, and then we rappelled off the boat because it was you know at a pretty steep angle, and then we get in the water. He when he was the first thing he did was hit a little triage. He says, Are you okay? Can you walk? Or are you hurt? Um, and I was like, Come on, man, we're good to go. Let's just get the hell out of here. So we rappel off the boat, and we're in the water, and he says, just head towards the basket. And uh, so he says, When you get in there, he gave me a real quick briefing about how to be I'll be transported. And the big thing is, again, if you're ever in this position, keep your arms and legs inside the basket. Because as it as it as it goes up like that, boom, it hits the side of the side of the helicopter or what have you. And you know, you could you could end up with a broken arm or no arm. So anyway, they they um hoist me away. I get up there. The um hoist operator was a uh young woman. Well, I say young, she was younger than I was. Um, her name was Megan, and she pulls the basket in, and just a little wisp of a thing. I was amazed that she was able to do that. I got I go 250 pounds, yeah. Six foot one. So anyway, I get in there and then I'm the basket's inside the helicopter. I see this other guy. I'm like, okay. So now I know that the rescue swimmer, Jethro, is still in the water. They gotta send the basket back down. I gotta get out of the basket. Not an easy thing to do because they don't want you falling out of the basket when they're lifting you up. So I'm like, I can't get out this way and I can't get out that way.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:53

And I finally just trying to help you, right? She's trying to get you.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

She wants to put the basket back in the water and get the rescue swimmer. So anyway, I roll out of the thing and I bruise the hell out of my rib cage, hitting the top of the basket. I imagine. You know, because it's probably a good two feet tall. So um, yeah, I would do it more graciously next time. Yeah. So I get out and I'm like, oh God, that probably other than being thrown across the cabin. That was, you know, so I'm hurting everywhere at this point, but I'm I'm dry, at least I'm out of the water, I'm in a helicopter. So they send the basket back down. They pick up Jethro. Now Jethro's bigger than I am, he's a good sized boy. And um, so now the basket comes up, and Megan's trying to pull the basket in, and she can't do it. So I'm like, and she's got a safety harness, she's hooked to the airframe, you know. And I'm like, and she can't he she can't pull him in. So I went ahead and got off my seat. I'm still wearing a life jacket, but it's a good 50-60 foot drop. And so I helped her pull the rescue swimmer in. And, you know, at that point, they're like, okay, unhook the basket, close the door, let's get going, let's get going. And they I guess we all got, yeah, we did. We got we got there's an intercom on board the helicopter, and they gave us headphones, but there was no place to plug them in. They were doing that for hearing protection.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

Because it is loud. Um, on top of that, I don't know. Have you ever been on a commercial jet when you're still at the gate and they turn on the air conditioning and oh yeah, the what comes out of the uh little Gasper, the little air vent?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

Air?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:28

Yeah, but because it's because it's warm, it can it condenses, it condenses. And so this looked like a frickin' concert because there were there were these air outlets on it.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:40

Oh yeah, it fogs the interior.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:42

Like a fog, fog machine. And I'm like, the whole interior is like fog. And I'm cold, you know, because I was I had become hypothermic, not mildly hypothermic. So I'm like, can we turn those things off? You know, on the airplane, you can just dial them closed. So I wasn't sure. So and so anyway, I don't know if what they did as far as that, I don't remember. But now we're in the helicopter and they they were able to communicate to me that the other gentleman that they had rescued had some cardiac issues and they were gonna go to the hospital. And I'm like, Well, I'll go where you're going. Like I had a choice. So we ended up at uh Lee County, Lee County Yeah, uh it was Gulf Coast, something or other.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:23

So yeah, it was in Lee County hospital, Gulf Coast.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:26

So we land on the helipad there. Um I was trying to look because I still have the voicemail.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:31

Did you take one last look at the boat?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:33

We de-plane and they're like into the hospital, into the hospital, the hospital. I stopped and turned and saluted the crew. I'm not sure if they saw me. But um about the boat.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:44

Did you look at the boat as you were flying off?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:47

Um so anyway, we went to the hospital and then they did triage and they separated us, and you know, they're gonna take my life jacket and my paltry little personal possessions and stuck them in one of their little hospital bags.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:00

And that's that's what I was well and I called the nurse back right away, you know, just within seconds after she left the voicemail message, and she didn't answer. Um, she didn't recognize my number, so she didn't answer. And um then I guess I called back and got the switchboard at the medical center and asked for the nurse's station and said, you know, I missed a call. This is the lady's name, and I I'm trying to figure out if my fiance is there, and you know, she the message says he is, and then blah blah blah blah blah. You know, then they um they got it to her and she called me back and she said, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, he is right here. Let me let you talk to him. So she hands the phone to him, and he said, You know, I'm okay. I lost every you know, lost my phone, lost my, you know, everything. And I and she he said, The boat's the boat's gone. And I said, What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:52

Where did it go?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:53

Never forget it. No, I didn't say it, I said, What are you talking about? Because I just kept thinking, even with him doing the e-perb, that he still was gonna save that boat. I just couldn't get my arm around the fact or my arms around the fact that he would have let it something happen to it. You know, it was beyond his control. But I just had that much faith in him. I really did. I mean, I had that much faith that he could somehow keep not so much anymore afloat. But Mother Nature didn't, you know, had other plans. But um yeah, I remember just saying, What are you talking about? Because I I with everything that had gone on, I just still thought that he, you know, somehow keep it floating. Yeah. But anyway, and so then they, you know, they said you gotta get over here right away. So then if it became in, you know, like a m emergency, how are we gonna get everything, you know, in the car?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:44

Oh, just now we're gonna declare an emergency? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:47

The emergency in Port Lauderdale.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:48

I was gonna say it's already well underway.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:51

Yeah, we gotta get to him and get there as fast as we can and how to you know, I had to try to get everything. Most of the the rest of the family wasn't even up yet. And um, you know, I walked out and said, he's alive, he's alive. He's alive! Everybody started screaming, he's alive. The kids were running around, he's alive, you know. So what an incredible story. Yeah, yeah. It was a lot, you know, so sad in the hindsight, you know, that the boat just and then it took us weeks to get the boat pulled back in. It would the the the salvage people had a difficult time finding it. That's another whole horrible thing to have to go through. Um, my son-in-law, who had a has a friend who is a pilot, they rented a plane out of I think Sarasota, and they were actually able to fly over, they flew all around Pine Island Sound looking for that boat, and because the salvage people said they couldn't find it. Um and uh Chris was up in the air and they were looking and they they found it, they took pictures, but then they didn't know exactly. They said, Oh yeah, it's there, we found it. We took some pictures which were hard to see because of the plane and you know how far away they were. But they used technology from the iPhone, you know, with information geocaching on the picture.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:11

Yes. What time it was taken and where.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:13

And then and and the location, and then we provided that to the salvage people, and it still took them a while to finally find it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:20

We're talking days. Yeah. Weeks.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:21

Well, it was weeks, and but days after we even provided what we thought was the exact location for them to go back and find it. And by that time it had been pilfered through because one of the things was that moving map that he had just put in, the big what over the GPS system thing, it was still intact, and the way the boat listed, it was still out of the water, it was fine. And when we finally got the boat towed in to see the boat for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:50

Snip, snip, snip.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:51

Somebody had gone on board and just done whatever. What kind of people would take advantage of the information? Somebody's got it on board their boat now. Somewhere in Fort Myers, they have our, you know, however much that cost.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:03

Um you don't want to know.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:05

No, I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:06

A couple of boat units.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:07

Somebody just somebody just snipped.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:09

Yeah, and you know, that happens on land too, where that's a big concern after a hurricane is looting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:14

And really, even without a hurricane.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:18

You've already lost everything at this point, anyway. It is the insult to injury. It is somebody kicking you when you're down. When you finally get to the boat, and then they have just ransacked it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:28

Do you have nameplates on port and starboard? Yes. Yeah, so Elizabeth Pearl had them. And um, I had taken one off because I was gonna get the new name. Put on the new nameplates.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:39

And so um the other one on that which side was it in a way. One one was up. And I'm looking on Facebook and I'm following the salvage company, and this jerk-off is standing there. This is we haven't even seen the boat. We've we've been told every such a thing that they can't find it, that they don't have it, they don't know where it is, they're not.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:00

Then they found it, but it was the wrong boat.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:02

Then they're not gonna be able to get to it, even though they found it.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:04

And you know, oh, it was horrible. So here's the salvage company. This salvage company some some redneck from Georgia.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:11

And I I hope you're watching this. And he's standing, there's a picture, and he's holding the nameplate with his Elizabeth Pearl, and I thought, You son of a bitch, you shouldn't be on that boat. Right. That's not your boat.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:21

They had taken it off, and this kid had I I don't know if he was one of the employees or something. And he's standing in front of a boat that's not even the Elizabeth Pearl holding our sign that he had removed from our boat. Like we hadn't even seen the boat.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:38

Unbelievable. I know. So some some some could have been just random looters when the boat was sitting there aground.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:46

Um this guy worked for the company.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:48

I understand that. And the looting may have continued after the boat was towed back to this decrepit marina.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:56

Who looted the boat? We don't know. Because how would you know what's salvageable, what's not anymore?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:01

Because you know, there's a well we we wanted to get whatever we could. That's what I know. You know, personal possessions and whatnot.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:06

It's interesting what made it through, and it it it's interesting even from the pictures, like even when they uprighted it and they put it up on um, you know, on stands, and then we they put a ladder up so we could get up in it. And it was interesting in the galley, like for instance, laying right here was this little folder that I had put together of boating recipes. And it was just cute. And it had it was just laying here.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:31

You ever cooked a boat?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:31

Someone took it out and I ever cooked a boat, and maybe we thought about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:35

No, no, no. Yeah, boating recipes, you know. How how and they they would tell Rebecca how to cook a boat. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:41

Well, there's there's there's Facebook um groups that you can cooking on a boat. And there's all these cool little easy things that you can.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:48

The gourmet galleys. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:49

I haven't had a chance to, you know, we're not we met, got married, and then he put the boat up for sale. So there's when we haven't had much of a chance to do cooking on a camper, cooking.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:59

Oh yeah, yeah, RV life or whatever. But yeah, we had a little syrup container that I loved that had been in my family for years. I never thought I'd see it again. Um, and it was just sitting sitting up inside one of the cabinets, just sitting there. How how could that be?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:14

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:15

How could every I mean, just that's unbelievable. It is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

Yeah, and so last last couple of questions. Well, one, I know a lot of people would want to know is did you have windstorm coverage with the insurance or was it just whole insurance?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:33

Well, we had boat insurance, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:35

Yeah, so we had we were it was insured for the value that the surveyor came up with. Like guess what? I just spent 35 grand on all the new electronics. Half of them had been installed, the rest of them were sitting in boxes on board. Yeah, on board. And so I was able to have one little souvenir after the fact I had the AIS box. Um, and that's for sale if you wanted.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:02

The answer is yes, we had insurance, but we couldn't get it surveyed until he had everything hooked up. That's why I was thinking it was the autopilot that was the only thing that was left. Because we had actually talked about having it resurveyed, which would have brought bumped up, yeah, bumped it up. So we were insured but underinsured based on everything that we had done to it and put on it, at you know, especially right towards the end.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:25

But then the other thing too, just just as a something to think about, is this is basically a home.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:32

Right? It's floats, but I mean, you've got two bathrooms. We call them heads, you got two staterooms, you've got that stuff in your three-ring binder, you got your GoPro, you got personal effects, you got spares. You start thinking about all the stuff that's on board this boat that really has nothing to do directly with with the value of the boat. Right. Um and I mean we had a ton of spares. We had I had the boat for a year and three months, and there were spares I'd never even gotten to.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:05

Yeah, I bet.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:06

Because the previous owner, you know, if he had a pump go out, um, he would buy a new pump, he would have the old pump rebuilt, and then boom, that goes into spares. So I you know, I ever you open up a nook and a cranny, um, and you're like, oh, there's the spare shore cable power. Shore power cable. Yeah. Um, so anyway, you know, the the heat exchangers, I had the old ones, I had the new ones. Sure. Some were installed, some weren't yet. Um, anyway, just heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:34

And so where does the boat sit today? Was it totally dismantled or has it been?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:40

The last time we saw it was sitting, they were gonna put it back in the water. But even in the water, like when the insurance company sent a surveyor to come look at it, um, he couldn't even get on board. He said, It's not safe, I'm not getting on board. Then they called him back. He said, It's still unsafe, I'm not getting on board. Um, so we didn't get on board until they got a bigger crane, a hundred-ton crane, they pulled it out of the water. They said with the water and the silt and everything that was on board, these things go 20 tons, roughly speaking. That's how much the boat weighs. Yeah, they had a hundred-ton crane, and they said it that when they lifted it out, it said 77 tons. Wow. Wow, so some of that was silt, you know. Anyway. Unbelievable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:22

And they were gonna put it right back in the water. I mean, they gave us just a couple of hours. You come down now to Fort Myers, you you know, if you want to board the boat, this is when you're gonna do it. And that's that was it. We're gonna put it back on the in the water. So we went down and climbed up precariously on the on a ladder way up in the air, because it was way off the ground. You know how the high how how deep the fevers are anyway.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:48

And we're climbing way up there, and we started trying to go through, but again, there's no float floorboard, so it was impossible to try to get across to see if anything was left in the in the front, or you know, I've forgotten what the name the true name is.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:02

Don't worry about the pointing. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:04

And um, yeah, we couldn't get down. It was a total disaster in the captain's quarters, it was just a mess. Um, because most of that was underwater.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:14

Yeah, going going back on board was hard.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:16

Yeah, I I I imagine that was that was tough.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:19

And uh, you know, luckily Dave is oh they made it through, no loss of life. My big my uh at at the time when the hours were going by and we knew he was in the really in the thick of things somewhere, um, and we didn't know what was going on with him. I think my biggest fear, and I told my daughter this, would be that they can't find him. This is that that the 72 hours after the storm, we don't know where he is.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:45

Yeah, which happened with some of the people who perished, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:48

Yeah, they didn't find them for the longest time. There was one guy they didn't find it, I think until December.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:53

Six six or seven months.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:54

Something like that. They didn't find him. He went down with his ship. Yes, stayed with the boat. Yeah, he was inside the cabin. And however he died, he he passed, but they didn't find him for the longest time because his boat was underwater, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:08

And there were just so many boats that were everywhere. Um so we we're so lucky that not only he lived, but that we also found out right away, okay. Yes, he's okay. He's okay. We wouldn't have it would have been horrible leaving Fort Myers or leaving Fort Lauderdale through Fort Myers and not knowing where he was. What do you do? Yeah, you know, that's the most important thing is knowing where they are, where you are, and uh luckily the safety measures he took is what saved his life. The EPERB.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:38

I don't know what would have happened without the EPRBs are extremely important. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:43

And yeah, and having them going through the paperwork to have them registered and have the appropriate information on there because a lot of people may get them and then not um keep up with them. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:55

Yeah, they didn't bother to update it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:57

Yeah, so yeah, that's yeah, and I know it's total devastation down there. I came through Fort Myers by boat just a couple of months afterwards, and I saw the big pile up of of uh boats at Legacy Harbor and at the Fort Myers City Marina and um out in Pine Island, and I went through again last year, I think back from the Keys, and there was there were still boats.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:20

Who was the couple that we spoke with in the last couple of weeks? And they said that they went by the pearl after the hurricane?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:28

I don't know. Oh, oh, who was that? I can't remember. They were coming, yeah, they were coming back from somewhere, and they said they went by oh, they came over and bought something. Didn't they buy something on marketplace? Dave actually showed them, showed them a picture. They said, Oh yeah, we went by that boat. Who were those? Oh, they were buying the dinghy. They were looking at the dinghy. Oh, there you go. We took the dinghy. We can we had them when they took the boat out of the water, we took the dinghy. Yeah. And um, we had we bought a little trailer and put the they took it off the boat and they uh off the pearl and they put it on our little trailer, and we took it. That was our little piece of whatever. And um then Dave worked on the the motor and made sure everything worked really well, and we sold it. We just sold it on our own.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:13

Well, thank you guys so much for I mean, it's been two years now, and uh it's it we're so fortunate to have you on board our boat, Motor Vessel Aquaculture, and have you share your story with us. It's very informative to me, which I imagine it will be extremely informative to the rest of the audience watching here, so I'm sure it's gonna be very helpful. But I mean, who do how often do you get to talk to somebody that has been through that experience in the eye of a major hurricane on boat, rescued by the Coast Guard, and survived to tell the story? It's just unbelievable. I really appreciate you guys for and joining us.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:51

A tear jerker for me. It was great to meet you.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:55

Likewise.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:56

I'm glad I got to meet your wife now.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:57

Me too. Absolutely. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:01

Well, I just want to make sure that I give a special shout out to the Coast Guards. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:07

Coasties are the best.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:08

Yes, they are. Thank you so much for tuning in to Epic Stories. If you're enjoying this series, please like, share, and subscribe. And if you have an epic story you would like to share, please reach out to us in the comments below. Stay tuned for more to come.