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Man Survives Six Hours Out In The Ocean March 1, 2004 Thirty-year-old Scott Morales of Newport was rescued by the Coast Guard yesterday afternoon, six hours after falling overboard and watching the crab boat he was on take off without him. "I'm watching the boat drive away and then for a few seconds you are almost in dreamland. You are like, is this really happening? Yeah, you're really in the water and the boat is driving away and you're the only one (out there)," Morales told KATU News by telephone. That is when his amazing story of survival begins, and how he nearly gave up on ever making it out of the ocean alive. Just Trying To Keep Afloat "I just started stripping my clothes. I kicked my boots off and I took my jacket off and I sat there for a second and got my bearings." "I looked around to see if there was anybody around and there was a boat coming up right behind me. I started trying to swim toward its path, but it came up a little further and then turned around." Morales then decided his best course of action would be to try to get something to keep him from going under water. "I tried to swim for some buoys, but the current kept pulling me away. They just kept getting further and further away, so I just kind of floated down until I could find the next crab pot and grabbed onto that, but then the current was running so hard, it kept pulling me under." "I knew I had to get the buoy off the line. I kept taking big breaths and going under the water and trying to get the buoy off the line. A couple of times it almost drowned me trying to get these buoys off, you know." "At that point, I figured alive or dead, I'm not going to be lost out here. There's no way. If I'm going to die, they're going to find me, so I'm going to try to strap everything that floats to me." "I knew that I wasn't going to be able to continue to swim under my own strength, so that's why I knew I needed the extra flotation." "I had them stuffed in my underwear, I had them stuffed in my shirt, trying to tuck my shirt into my underwear so it would hold everything in ." Hoping For A Rescue "I saw a boat come by and I waved and waved and waved, but he never saw me. And that's when another squall came through." "I thought, well I missed the one boat that has come by and I figured this is it because my legs were so cramped I couldn't kick anymore. I was down to dog paddling." Finally, Morales says he spotted a helicopter. "I knew that if I didn't get seen this time, that was it, because they are only going to make so many patterns in that search area and then they are going to move on to another area." "So I had one more sweep to try to get them. I had the buoys under my arms, tucked under my armpits like water wings to try to keep afloat." "I kept taking them out from under my arms because they were bright yellow and I would wave them in the air. Finally, I'm waving both of them with both my hands. I'm completely under water and waving the buoys out of the water." Morales said the next thing he knew, the helicopter was above him and he knew his ordeal was finally going to be over. "Oh man, instant relief, absolutely instant relief. I had pretty much accepted my fate." "My two worst fears in the world are drowning and freezing to death and I thought I was going to do both in the same day." Morales says he is suffering from hypothermia, but expects to be released from the hospital Monday. Survival Rate Statistically speaking, cold water survival experts suggest Scott Morales should have been dead more than three hours before he was rescued. At a water temperature of 50-degrees: the average person suffers total exhaustion or loses consciousness after 30 minutes to an hour in the water. The average person can only survive one-to-three hours in water that cold. Factors that affect survival time include a person's size and body fat percentage, whether or not they're wearing a floatation device, and whether they are swimming or treading water. |
