I was an excellent swimmer, probably still am, but one thing I had a difficult time with was floating. I could tread water but I was a sinker. I could fill my lungs with air and I would still sink. My sister in law is like an otter. She can float on her back all day with no effort.
Sharks missed one.
Amazing! Great young man that knows God deserves the glory.
Glad it as GA not AK or instead of the 10 hours would be 10 minutes ...
He’s lucky, and he should have known the drownproofing survival float technique. Floating on your back isn’t the ticket.
Good history and background here. Some of the pics aren’t coming up, though.
http://www.drownproofing.com
There is a good diagram of the technique here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090204062356/http://lifesavingclub.com/lifesavers/survival-swimming/drownproofing.html
Biggest thing going for him, he did not panic nor give into despair, even after those long hours in the dark! Faith in God, composure and the will to live kept him going! Remember this when the atheists talk about the failures and weakness in having a religious belief, this is a singular counter-argument!
Coasties again.
I’ve never heard of sitting on shore to then get washed by an incoming wave and pulled out. Not to mention, a rip tide is narrow and easily escaped.
I’ve never been able to float either. And that didn’t go over well in Navy boot camp.
I can float on my back forever and float straight up with minimal effort (fresh water or pool). In salt water I could get a full night’s sleep.
My grandfather’s merchant ship was sunk by torpedo in WWI and he backfloated for many hours in oil fouled water until rescued. He could not swim.
Everyone here so far missed on how to survive a rip tide.
You don’t swim against it. You calmly swim parallel to shore until you reach a spot where the rip tide is is no longer pushing you out. Then you calmly swim back to shore.
Wave hitting shore are a zero sum game. For every rip tide pulling water out, there is a tide pushing water in. You just have to calmly find the tide going in.
Any wonder why it took so long to find him? Stupid writer of words.
A couple of things:
a teammate in college died fighting a riptide in Panama City on spring break. The worst part was he was from Ocean City and should have known how to deal with it. But I’m pretty sure he was drunk.
as a young teenager, my dad and I came up from dives TWICE in the FL Keys (we lived close) to find our boat gone.
The first time wasn’t very scary. We were maybe 4-5 miles out and there were no other boats around when we came up. Another diver was leaving and thought it was strange our boat was drifting during a dive. He circled back to check on the boat and decided to head back to the reef. It was good luck, but we would have ditched dive gear and made it to shore
The second time was far more terrifying. We were at a reef called Elliot key which is outside of the biscayne bay islands. That is a log ride from any ramp. Bad weather. 6 foot seas. 60+ foot deep dive. Dad goes up 15 minutes in to get a bearing on the boat and it was gone. His girl was sleeping in the “cabin”.
We had to wait until the crest of each wave to see the bot in the distance. He said we were going to swim after it. I said no way in hell. I wanted to swim the 1/2 mile to the light tower. He was adamant. By then I was 16 and stood my ground. I said the boat was getting pushed by the wind against the current and we would die trying. I just started swimming. He had to make a choice. Crappy day for him.
Anyway — that day was one of the few were we had a dive flag towed, only because the girl was in the boat. At the crest of a wave I saw a sailboat 1 mile away towards the deep blue. I started waving it at the crest of every wave.
He saw us and turned towards us. That boat had a 70 year old man, out sailing alone in 6+ foot seas. He didn’t have a ladder. He waited until his boat was at the trough of a wave and yanked us each out of the water by our tank valves.... while hanging onto something else with his other hand.
If I could go back in time I would like to see the scene again.
There are few moments in my life that I wonder about intervention, and that is one of them.
End of the story: he sails us to our boat. My dad dives in the water yelling his girls name. He is terrified she got in the water and lost the boat. It was like a scene from a movie. She steps out of the cabin and annoyed groans “did you lose your boat again?!”
The old man and I laughed our butts off.
Interesting story, I’m at something of a loss trying to understand how it all happened. Article made no mention of jellyfish stings or anything similar. Will be curious to see if his account holds up under questioning?