What possessed reporter Carmen Cox to put down these sensational terms? The video shows something that's about as tame and calm as this kind of event could be!
"[D]escends straight down? You don't say! It looked to me to be less than a 10degree downward glide at the end, which would have been standard practice in such an event for the pilot to attempt. Straight down? No such thing happened there! But someone wants us to think in such false, overly dramatized terms!
Choppy waters? Who's trying to kid whom? By any seaman's definition, that's a calm sea! Choppy would define a sea whose waves might, just might throw a little water in a swimmer's face. A swimming pool with two swimmers would generate more "choppiness" than the water in the video.
And yet, ABC has this sensational stuff, and we at FR were treated to the sensational, over-the-top characterizations of the event by momentarily-nameless individuals.
Those individuals seemed to suggest the survivors would be exhausted from having to wait in the wave-swept water that long. Perhaps the few that were very excited and quickly swam ashore and weren't used to that level of exertion were exhausted, but I see no reason to suggest that any life-jacketed person would become exhausted by merely trying to stay alive in that calm ocean. Neither do I see anything that could possibly have caused Keith Yamamoto to lose grasp of Ms. Fuddy because of "choppy" seas. By the video evidence, everyone was even calmer than one would expect.
Furthermore, a Freeper (troll) suggested this amount of time in the 77-78 degree water could have led to hypothermia. That temperature is warmer than the water in a large majority of swimming pools. Just light paddling would be sufficient to keep most people adequately warm while swimming in that water, all the more as people generally had on clothes. Though Keith had just swimming trunks and a T-shirt, I'm given to understand. "How convenient!"
HF
Carmen certainly knows how to spice up a story! Perhaps she’s an aspiring novelist.