sailboat rescue at sea

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Navy, Coast Guard, save mother, child stranded at sea as hurricane approaches

By Jeff Schogol

Posted on Sep 5, 2024 7:00 AM EDT

Nearly 1,000 miles east of Hawaii, a 47-year-old woman and her 7-year-old daughter were adrift on a French-flagged sailboat amid rough seas, along with their cat and tortoise. 

The boat’s captain had died during their voyage, and a Category-2 hurricane was bearing down on them.

For the next three nerve-wracking days, the Coast Guard and Navy raced against time and the worsening weather to get the woman, her daughter, and their pets off the boat before the hurricane arrived.

Kevin Cooper of the Coast Guard served as the search and rescue mission coordinator during the operation.

The Coast Guard first learned that the vessel was in distress around 12:33 p.m. on Aug. 24 when they picked up a distress alert from the sailboat’s emergency position indicating radio beacon, or EPIRB.

The device relayed the boat’s position, but rescuers initially had no idea what type of emergency was unfolding, Cooper told Task & Purpose.

A Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules flew to the scene and heard the woman’s mayday call over the radio, but they could not communicate with her because her VHF radio ceased to be able to transmit.

“She had been on the radio every 30 minutes or so just calling out — kind of into the blind — for anybody around who might hear,” said Cooper, a retired Coast Guard lieutenant commander. “She speaks a very small amount of English, enough that she knew to be on the radio and to say that they had one deceased crew member and then it was her and her daughter on the vessel and that they needed assistance.”

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The woman lit emergency flares as the C-130 flew overhead. The boat had a small sail rigged but it was drifting without any motor power. The Coast Guardsmen in the plane noted that waves were crashing over the side boat, and some of the water was flooding the vessel’s cabin. Even a little bit of water would change the boat’s stability and could lead to an even more dire situation.

The C-130 stayed until it had just enough fuel to return to base. Another Hercules arrived at the scene at 9 a.m. the following day and the aircrew saw the woman and her daughter “waving their arms before retreating inside the cabin,” a Coast Guard news release says.

“I think that she was growing concerned because the storm was expected to come right through their location, and she knew that time was not on our side for effecting a rescue,” Cooper said. “They needed to get on a surface vessel and then clear the area to avoid the storm.”

The Coast Guard was able to reach the Seri Emperor, a Singapore-flagged liquid petroleum gas tanker, which arrived on the scene at roughly 5:20 p.m. that day. But the ship’s captain determined that the seas were so rough that it was too dangerous for the crew to launch a small boat to rescue the people aboard the sailboat, Cooper said.

The Seri Emperor’s captain agreed to remain on the scene to monitor the situation.

Rescuers had also reached the U.S. Navy destroyer William P. Lawrence, which arrived at 5 a.m. on Aug. 26. By then, the destroyer’s crew only had a few hours to get the passengers on the sailboat to safety before the hurricane arrived, so things were coming down to the wire.

“It was particularly anxious for all of the folks who were involved in planning this rescue, both with the Coast Guard and with the Navy because the clock was ticking, and we knew that they had a very small window to be able to get their boat in the water to do this rescue,” Cooper said. “We all get very emotionally invested in the outcome of these cases, and especially this one: Knowing that a 7-year-old girl, that her life was threatened, I think we’re all very protective of the children.”

Despite the worsening sea conditions, crew members from the William P. Lawrence were able to launch their small boat. The sailors braved 10-foot waves to race toward the stricken sailboat.

“The ocean is just wild — it’s something of an uncontrolled environment,” Cooper said. “Also depending on the period of the waves — basically how close they are together to where when you come off the top of one wave, you’re basically crashing into the back of the next one — it’s like being inside of a washing machine, where you’re just constantly being thrown around.”

Such missions also require rescuers to be in constant communication with the people in trouble so they can move the people to safety as quickly as possible, he said.

Three of the William P. Lawrence sailors who took part in the rescue told Task & Purpose how the operation unfolded.

“We spent lot of time the day before planning, discussing what-ifs and contingencies, with decision points like ‘should it be a [Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat] recovery or shipboard recovery, or what we would do if they refused to get into the RHIB,’” said Navy Lt. Stuart Sloat, a weapons officer aboard the destroyer and the search and rescue swimmer of the boat crew that day.

Despite the 8 to 10-foot seas and 15-mile-per-hour winds, Navy Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Jesus Espana described the approach to the sailboat as “moderately dangerous.”

“Small boat operations always have some element of risk, and the seas were deteriorating while we were out there, but we knew that saving the lives of the mother and daughter was worth it,” said Espana, the medic aboard the boat. “Fortunately, the mother appeared to be healthy and in reasonably good spirits, as did her daughter, which made recovery easier than if they had been dehydrated or sick.”

The sailboat’s aft mast was broken off and trailing behind the vessel, and the rough seas made it difficult for the sailors to determine how to safely approach the boat, said Seaman Micheal Hunter, who drove the small boat.

“The movements of the boat were unpredictable because it was just adrift — the crew wasn’t steering it,” Hunter said. “The swells were coming from behind us. I’d look to see when there was a period of flat seas astern and time a run at the sailboat, but we could only pull alongside them for a couple of seconds at a time before we broke away — we had to make an approach for every transfer.”

When the sailors reached the sailboat, Sloat told the woman that they were with the U.S. Navy.

“But she looked confused,” Sloat recalled, “So I said, ‘Français’ — at which point I handed the megaphone to our first lieutenant who speaks fluent French.”

Cooper said it “felt like forever” as he and the other rescuers waited to hear the sailors had been able to get the passengers and their pets aboard the Navy’s small boat.

“The real sigh of relief was when they said that they had everyone safely aboard the Navy vessel, the William P. Lawrence, because then we knew they were in the hands of the finest Navy on the planet,” Cooper said.

French officials will determine the cause of the sailboat captain’s death, Cooper said. The sea was so rough that the William P. Lawrence’s captain decided it was too dangerous to recover the man’s body.

As soon as the woman and her daughter were aboard the destroyer, Cooper knew that the ship would be able to reach safe waters before the hurricane arrived.

“A great relief for me because I didn’t sleep for two nights before that,” Cooper said. “The need to create an achievable rescue plan with all of these factors was really difficult. Then when the Navy said that they would go, we definitely did not feel like we were in the clear, but we did feel like we had an incredibly capable resource with some of the finest trained mariners you could ask for to help effect this rescue. It was still a nail-biter all the way down to the last minute.”

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2 men, dog rescued 10 days after sailboat reported missing in the Atlantic

Updated on: December 15, 2022 / 7:05 PM EST / CBS/AP

Two men and a pet dog were rescued from a sailboat without power or fuel more than 200 miles off Delaware, 10 days after friends and relatives had last heard from them, the U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday.

Kevin Hyde, 65, and Joe Ditomasso, 76, were sailing from Cape May, New Jersey, to Marathon, Florida. But they disappeared after their Atrevida II sailboat left North Carolina's Outer Banks on Dec. 3.

The Coast Guard was notified Sunday that the two sailors were overdue and launched a search that would stretch from Florida to New Jersey, the agency said. Coast Guard cutters and aircraft participated in the search along with ships from the U.S. Navy and commercial and recreational vessels.

On Tuesday, Hyde and Ditomasso waved their arms to draw the attention of the crew of the Silver Muna tanker ship off Delaware's coast, the Coast Guard said.

The sailboat's lack of fuel or power rendered its radios and navigation equipment inoperable, according to the Coast Guard.

In a news conference Wednesday in New York, Hyde praised the "diligence" of the crew of the Silver Muna.

"And they found us, and they realized that we were on board and we were waving and stuff like that," Hyde said. "Because by that time my masts were down, all systems were mute. We were just kind of hanging out in the boat...He backed up, he saw us, and he came around and he picked us up. It was amazing. It's like finding a needle in a haystack in this situation."

Ditomasso added that the two went without drinking water for the final two days prior to being rescued, and were forced to rely on extracting water from beans they had aboard.

"And I bought these beans," Ditomasso told reporters. "And the best part about the beans, they have water in them. They were soaked in water. And we were taking sips at a time."

The men and the dog were brought aboard the tanker shortly after 4 p.m. An evaluation by the ship's medical staff revealed no immediate concerns, the Coast Guard said.

After arriving in New York Harbor, the Coast Guard evaluated the two men further before reuniting them with their family and friends.

"This is an excellent example of the maritime community's combined efforts to ensure safety of life at sea," Daniel Schrader, a Coast Guard spokesman said in a statement.

Cmdr. Schrader also stressed the importance of sailors traveling with what's commonly known as an "EPIRB" or Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. It allows people on a boat to immediately make contact with first responders in an emergency.

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Coast Guard, Navy rescue woman, child, pets from sailboat east of Hilo

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HONOLULU – The Coast Guard and Navy earlier this week rescued a distressed woman, child and their pets from a sailboat beset by weather east of Hawaii Island.

Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu watchstanders received a distress alert from an emergency position indicating radio beacon at 12:33 p.m. Saturday originating from a position approximately 700 miles east of Hilo.

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A HC-130 Hercules airplane crew was dispatched from Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point.

After arriving on scene, the airplane crew sighted a 47-foot sailboat — the French-flagged vessel Albroc — and heard a mayday call from a 47-year-old woman aboard the vessel, reporting that she and her 7-year-old daughter were beset by weather and in need of rescue.

The woman also reported there was a deceased man on board.

According to the Coast Guard, the Hercules crew could not establish direct communication with the woman but saw her light two distress flares and observed the sailboat drifting and taking waves over the beam. On-scene weather conditions were 6 foot seas and 20 mph winds.

JRCC Honolulu watchstanders requested assistance from the Navy’s U.S. Pacific Fleet and U.S. 3rd Fleet, which diverted the crew of USS William P. Lawrence, a guided-missile destroyer homeported in Pearl Harbor, to the sailboat’s position.

Additionally, watchstanders requested assistance from the master of the Seri Emperor, a Singapore-flagged, 754-foot liquid petroleum gas tanker that was approximately 290 miles south of the sailboat, an 18-hour transit.

At 9 a.m. Sunday, a Hercules crew from Air Station Barbers Point arrived on scene and observed a woman and girl waving their arms before retreating inside the cabin. The aircrew unsuccessfully attempted to communicate with the two boaters by hailing them on the radio and dropping message blocks.

At 5:20 p.m. Sunday, the crew of the Seri Emperor arrived on scene but was unable to safely remove the woman and child from the vessel due to deteriorating weather conditions ahead of Hurricane Gilma approaching the area, the Coast Guard reported.

The tanker crew remained on scene until 5 a.m. Monday, when the William P. Lawrence arrived.

With seas greater than 25 feet forecast within 12 hours of their position and the damaged condition of the Albroc, the William P. Lawrence had a six-hour window to safely conduct small boat recovery operations.

A small boat crew from the Navy ship launched and rescued the woman, girl, a cat and tortoise from the sailboat.

“I am extremely proud of the crew’s professionalism in planning and executing the safe recovery of two persons at sea on a disabled vessel in worsening conditions,” said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Bobby Wayland, commanding officer of William P. Lawrence.

Due to adverse on-scene weather conditions, the crew could not safely recover the deceased individual from the sailing vessel.

“While saddened by the loss of the sailing vessel’s master, I couldn’t be prouder of the combined efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy who saved the lives of two other passengers,” said Vice Adm. John Wade, commander, U.S. 3rd Fleet.”

At 5 p.m. Wednesday, the William P. Lawrence moored at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu. Representatives from the Coast Guard and the Honorary Consul of France in Hawaii received and provided care for the survivors.

In a press release, the Coast Guard did not name the passengers or the deceased male.

The sailboat remained adrift approximately 1,000 miles east of Honolulu, the Coast Guard said today.

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Deceased boat master left behind in risky Navy rescue near Hawaii remains adrift

A 7-year-old girl hugs a sailor assigned to the USS William P. Lawrence at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu on Aug. 28, 2024, after crew members of the ship rescued the girl and her mother from rough seas about 900 miles east of Hawaii. ()

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii — French authorities have not been able to recover the body of a dead man left aboard a sailboat drifting near Hawaii that was the scene of a perilous rescue of a mother and her child by a U.S. Navy destroyer last week.

The master of the French-flagged sailboat Albroc died while the vessel was about 900 miles east of Honolulu, leaving a woman and small child stranded aboard.

Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point in Hawaii received a distress call in the early hours of Aug. 24 from the sailboat, the Navy said in an Aug. 29 news release. The Coast Guard launched an HC-130 Hercules plane, and upon reaching the scene crew members spotted the Albroc, a 47-foot sailboat.

It was then that the crew heard a mayday call on VHF-FM channel 16 from a 47-year-old woman aboard the vessel reporting that she and her 7-year-old daughter were in dire need of rescue, reporting that the master of the boat was dead.

The plane crew was unable to communicate directly with the woman.

Winds of roughly 20 mph were churning up waves of about six feet that were splashing over the side of the sailboat.

The Coast Guard requested further assistance from the Seri Emperor, a Singapore-flagged, 754-foot liquid petroleum gas tanker that was located about 290 miles south of the sailboat. The transit to the sailboat took about 18 hours.

At 9 a.m. on Aug. 25, another Coast Guard crew aboard a Hercules arrived on the scene and saw the mother and daughter waving their arms before they sought safety inside the boat’s cabin.

The U.S. Navy diverted the USS William P. Lawrence, a guided-missile destroyer homeported in Pearl Harbor, to the sailboat’s position.

The Seri Emperor arrived late in the afternoon on Aug. 25, but its crew was unable to safely transfer the woman and child from the vessel due to worsening weather ahead of the approaching Hurricane Gilma.

The tanker remained on the scene until early Aug. 26, when the Navy destroyer arrived.

“With seas greater than 25 feet forecast within 12 hours of their position and the damaged condition of the Albroc, the William P. Lawrence had a six-hour window to safely conduct small boat recovery operations,” the news release states.

A small boat crew from the Navy ship launched in 10-foot waves and rescued the woman, girl, a cat and tortoise from the sailboat.

They were unable to recover the body of the dead man aboard the boat.

Lea Goigoux, a spokeswoman for the French Consulate in San Francisco, said in an email Friday that French authorities have not yet been able to recover the boat or the boat master, who was not related to the passengers.

The Navy destroyer arrived at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu on Aug. 28, where members of the Coast Guard and the Honorary Consul of France in Hawaii provided care for the pair of survivors.

Neither required hospitalization, Goigoux said.

“I am extremely proud of the crew’s professionalism in planning and executing the safe recovery of two persons at sea on a disabled vessel in worsening conditions,” Cmdr. Bobby Wayland, commanding officer of the William P. Lawrence, said in the news release. “My boat crew — in particular the coxswain — demonstrated deft boat handling and good judgement in approaching the distressed vessel and transferring the survivors.”

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Adrift for 3 months, a man and his dog lived on raw fish until rescued by fishermen

The Associated Press

Australian Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock gives a thumbs up during a welcoming ceremony with Grupo Mar President Antonio Suarez, left, and Oscar Meza Oregó, captain of the Mexican tuna boat "Maria Delia," after being rescued from sea and arriving to port in Manzanillo, Mexico, Tuesday, July 18, 2023. Fernando Llano/AP hide caption

Australian Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock gives a thumbs up during a welcoming ceremony with Grupo Mar President Antonio Suarez, left, and Oscar Meza Oregó, captain of the Mexican tuna boat "Maria Delia," after being rescued from sea and arriving to port in Manzanillo, Mexico, Tuesday, July 18, 2023.

MANZANILLO, Mexico — An Australian sailor who was rescued by a Mexican tuna boat after being adrift at sea with his dog for three months said Tuesday that he is grateful to be alive after setting foot on dry land for the first time since their ordeal began.

Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock, 54, disembarked in the Mexican city of Manzanillo after being examined on board the boat that rescued him, the Maria Delia.

"I'm feeling alright. I'm feeling a lot better than I was, I tell ya," Shaddock, smiling, bearded and thin, told reporters on the dock in the port city about 210 miles (337 kilometers) west of Mexico City.

For 24 days, Elvis Francois was lost at sea — living mostly off Ketchup

"To the captain and fishing company that saved my life, I'm just so grateful. I'm alive and I didn't really think I'd make it," Shaddock said, adding that he and his "amazing" dog Bella are both doing well.

Shaddock described himself as a quiet person who loves being alone on the ocean. Asked why he set out in April from Mexico's Baja Peninsula to cross the Pacific Ocean to French Polynesia, he was initially at a loss.

"I'm not sure I have the answer to that, but I very much enjoy sailing and I love the people of the sea," he said. "It's the people of the sea that make us all come together. The ocean is in us. We are the ocean."

The Sydney man's catamaran set sail from the Mexican city of La Paz but was crippled by bad weather weeks into the journey. He said the last time he saw land was in early May as he sailed out of the Sea of Cortez and into the Pacific. There was a full moon.

Shaddock said he had been well-provisioned, but a storm knocked out his electronics and ability to cook. He and Bella survived on raw fish.

"There were many, many, many bad days and many good days," he said.

"The energy, the fatigue is the hardest part," he said. He passed the time fixing things and stayed positive by going into the water to "just enjoy being in the water."

When the tuna boat's helicopter spotted Shaddock's catamaran about 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) from land, it was the first sign of humans he had seen in three months, Shaddock said. The pilot tossed him a drink and then flew away, returning later with a speed boat from the María Delia, he said.

Grupomar, which operates the fishing fleet, didn't specify when the rescue occurred. But it said in a statement that Shaddock and his dog were in a "precarious" state when found, lacking provisions and shelter, and that the tuna boat's crew gave them medical attention, food and hydration.

Shaddock said the tuna boat became his land and that Bella was an immediate hit with the crew. He also explained how he and the dog met.

The crew of the Mexican tuna boat "Maria Delia" pose for photos with Bella, the dog of Australian Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock, both of whom they rescued from a incapacitated catamaran in the Pacific Ocean, as they bring the pair to port in Manzanillo, Mexico, Tuesday, July. 18, 2023. Fernando Llano/AP hide caption

The crew of the Mexican tuna boat "Maria Delia" pose for photos with Bella, the dog of Australian Timothy Lyndsay Shaddock, both of whom they rescued from a incapacitated catamaran in the Pacific Ocean, as they bring the pair to port in Manzanillo, Mexico, Tuesday, July. 18, 2023.

"Bella sort of found me in the middle of Mexico. She's Mexican," he said. "She's the spirit of the middle of the country and she wouldn't let me go. I tried to find a home for her three times and she just kept following me onto the water. She's a lot braver than I am, that's for sure."

Perhaps for that reason, Bella did not leave the boat until Shaddock had driven away Tuesday. He had already chosen Genaro Rosales, a crew member from Mazatlan, to adopt her on the condition that he would take good care of the dog.

Shaddock said he'll be returning to Australia soon and that he's looking forward to seeing his family.

There have been other stories of extreme ocean survival, but they do not all end happily.

In 2016, a Colombian fisherman was rescued after spending two months adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Three of his crewmates died. He was rescued by a merchant ship more than 2,000 miles (3.220 kilometers) southeast of Hawaii. He and the others had been fishing off Colombia's coast when their skiff's motor failed, leaving them adrift.

In 2014, a Salvadoran fisherman washed ashore on the tiny Pacific atoll of Ebon in the Marshall Islands after drifting at sea for 13 months. Jose Salvador Alvarenga left Mexico for a day of shark fishing in December 2012. He said he survived on fish, birds and turtles before his boat washed ashore 5,500 miles (8,850 kilometers) away.

In other cases, boats are found, but without survivors or are lost entirely.

More than 20,000 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Antonio Suarez, Grupomar's president, said Tuesday that this could be the María Delia's final trip because he is modernizing the company's fleet and the boat is its smallest and is more than 50 years old.

If so, it would be a "marvelous farewell, saving human lives," Suarez said.

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U.S. Coast Guard Details Multi-Day Rescue of Mom, 7-Year-Old Daughter and Their Pets Stranded Off Hawaii

A crew member on the boat, however, was deceased at the time of the distress call

U.S. Navy photo by Chief Warrant Officer 2 Lance Watson

The U.S. Coast Guard recently undertook a dayslong operation to rescue a mother, her young daughter and their pets who were stranded in the Pacific Ocean, along with a deceased man's body, during Hurricane Gilma.

The rescue efforts initially began on Aug. 24, when officials received a distress alert approximately 925 miles east of Honolulu from the Joint Rescue Coordination Center (JRCC) Honolulu at 12:33 p.m local time, according to a news release from Coast Guard officials in the Pacific. 

Upon arriving at the scene of the alert, a U.S. Coast Guard airplane crew saw a 47-foot sailboat, flying under a French flag, and heard a mayday call from a 47-year-old woman aboard the vessel reporting that she and her 7-year-old daughter were in need of rescue and that a man's dead body was on board as well, the release states. 

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While in the midst of weather conditions that included “6-foot seas and 20 mph winds,” a Coast Guard airplane crew was unable to establish “direct communication with the woman but saw her light two distress flares and observed the sailboat drifting and taking waves over the beam,” officials said. 

To further assist in the rescue, Coast Guard officials requested support from both the Navy and the Seri Emperor vessel, a Singapore-flagged, 754-foot liquid petroleum gas tanker that was 290 miles from the sailboat and 18 hours away.

Early on Aug. 25, at approximately 9 a.m. local time, the Coast Guard airplane crew saw the woman and her daughter signaling for help by waving their arms — but unfortunately, the attempts to communicate with them via radio and message blocks were unsuccessful. 

Later that day, at 5:20 p.m. local time, the Seri Emperor had also arrived but due to extreme weather conditions caused by Hurricane Gilma, it was unable to rescue the woman and her daughter either — though the crew remained until 5 a.m. on Aug. 26, when another vessel, the William P. Lawrence arrived, according to the Coast Guard.

With just six hours to complete the rescue, the William P. Lawrence along with a boat crew from the Navy rescued the woman, her daughter and their pets, a cat and tortoise, from the boat, officials said.

However, the deceased man could not be recovered safely due to weather conditions at the time that were described by the Coast Guard as “8 to 10-foot seas and 15 mph winds.” 

The man was identified as the boat's master. It's not clear how he died. (Representatives from the Coast Guard did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for additional comment.)

Speaking about the operation, Vice Adm. John Wade, commander, U.S. 3rd Fleet, said in a statement that “while saddened by the loss of the sailing vessel’s master, I couldn’t be prouder of the combined efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy who saved the lives of two other passengers.”

“I’m particularly grateful for the professionalism exhibited by the crew of USS William P. Lawrence who executed the rescue flawlessly under extremely dangerous conditions,” he said.

On Wednesday, Aug. 28, the mother, daughter and their pets arrived at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu and received care from the Coast Guard and the Honorary Consul of France in Hawaii, per officials.

The sailboat currently remains adrift “1,000 miles east of Honolulu,” the Coast Guard said.

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Dave Portnoy rescued by Coast Guard after drifting out to sea: 'Almost lost Captain Dave'

"captain dave may never go on the boat again," said portnoy..

Barstool Sports' owner and founder Dave Portnoy was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard after losing control of his boat off the Massachusetts' coast.

"You boys almost lost Captain Dave today," said Portnoy in a TikTok video he posted explaining what happened. "Captain Dave almost was lost to the ocean."

On Monday, Portnoy took his mother out on a boat ride off the coast of Nantucket, he said. Portnoy did not try to turn on the boat before unhooking it from the from the buoys. He drifted out and attempted to turn on the boat only to find that the boat had no power.

Content warning: Video below contains language that is not suitable for all audiences .

The boat had no power, radio or anchor and there were heavy winds which caused him to drift out to sea, Portnoy explained.

"Next thing you know, Captain Dave is lost at sea," said Portnoy.

The Barstool founder began screaming for help as he sailed, and shot a distress signal from a flare gun he kept onboard the boat.

Coast Guard rescues Portnoy

According to Portnoy, a woman "in what looks like a rowboat," boarded his boat and asked if they can make a TikTok together, said Portnoy. He declined her request and then used her radio to contact the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard made it to Portnoy's location where they tied up his boat and towed it back.

This was Portnoy's third, and possibly last time captaining a boat.

"Captain Dave may never go on the boat again," he said.

USA TODAY reached out to the Coast Guard for comment.

Julia is a trending reporter for USA TODAY. She has covered various topics, from local businesses and government in her hometown, Miami, to tech and pop culture. You can reach her at [email protected], connect with her on  LinkedIn  or follow her on  X, formerly Twitter ,  Instagram  and  TikTok : @juliamariegz

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Woman, child, tortoise, cat rescued from sailboat offshore Hawaii

A deceased man on the boat could not be safely recovered.

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The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy rescued a distressed woman, her daughter and their pets, a cat and a tortoise from a sailboat that had been beset by weather about 925 miles off the coast of Hawaii .

Watchstanders at Joint Rescue Coordination Center (JRCC) Honolulu received a distress alert shortly after 12:30 p.m. on Aug. 24 from an emergency radio beacon roughly 925 miles east of Hawaii, according to a news release from the Coast Guard.

The watchstanders issued a SafetyNET broadcast which disseminates maritime safety information to all ships in the area, conducted a query of vessels and launched an HC-130 Hercules airplane crew to search for the stranded people in the sailboat.

The airplane crew spotted the 47-foot French-flagged vessel called Albroc and a 47-year-old woman aboard the boat issued a mayday call, explaining that herself, her seven-year-old daughter and their pets needed rescuing.

NAVY TO SIDELINE 17 VESSELS DUE TO MANPOWER SHORTAGE, OPERATING CREWS WILL BE REDISTRIBUTED: REPORT

The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy rescued a distressed woman, her daughter and their pets from a sailboat that had been beset by weather about 925 miles off the coast of Hawaii. (U.S. Coast Guard District 14 Hawaii Pacific)

The woman also said that there was a deceased man on the boat.

The Hercules crew was unable to establish direct communication with the woman but observed her lighting two distress flares and the sailboat drifting and taking waves over the beam, the Coast Guard said. 

Watchstanders requested assistance from the Navy's Pacific Fleet and 3rd Fleet, which diverted the crew of USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110), an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer homeported in Pearl Harborto, the sailboat's position. They also asked for assistance from the master of the Seri Emperor, a 754-foot Singapore-flagged liquid petroleum gas tanker that was about 290 miles south of the sailboat.

At 9 a.m. on Aug. 25, a Hercules crew arrived at the scene and observed a woman and girl waving their arms before retreating inside the cabin. The aircrew attempted to communicate with the two boaters by hailing them on the radio and dropping message blocks, but were unsuccessful.

The Coast Guard and Navy completed the rescue of a distressed woman, child and a cat and tortoise from a sailboat beset by weather offshore Hawaii. (U.S. Coast Guard District 14 Hawaii Pacific)

Later that day, at 5:20 p.m., the Seri Emperor arrived at the scene but was unable to rescue the boaters because of deteriorating weather conditions ahead of Hurricane Gilma, which was approaching the area. The tanker crew remained near the stranded sailboat until 5 a.m. on Aug. 26, when the William P. Lawrence arrived.

The William P. Lawrence had a six-hour window to safely conduct boat recovery operations, according to the Coast Guard, noting seas greater than 25 feet forecast within 12 hours of their position and the damaged condition of the sailboat.

"I am extremely proud of the crew’s professionalism in planning and executing the safe recovery of two persons at sea on a disabled vessel in worsening conditions," said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Bobby Wayland, commanding officer of William P. Lawrence. "My boat crew – in particular the coxswain – demonstrated deft boat handling and good judgement in approaching the distressed vessel and transferring the survivors. I also appreciate the remarkable coordination and information provided by the USCG throughout the entire operation – very cool to see the Navy / Coast Guard team work together so smoothly." 

A small boat crew from the Navy ship launched and rescued the woman, girl and their pets from the sailboat. But because of weather conditions on the scene at the time of the rescue, there were eight to 10-foot seas and 15 mph winds, the deceased man could not be safely recovered.

"While saddened by the loss of the sailing vessel’s master, I couldn't be prouder of the combined efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy who saved the lives of two other passengers," said Vice Adm. John Wade, commander, U.S. 3rd Fleet. "I'm particularly grateful for the professionalism exhibited by the crew of USS William P. Lawrence who executed the rescue flawlessly under extremely dangerous conditions."

2 US AIRCRAFT CARRIER GROUPS ORDERED TO STAY IN MIDDLE EAST WITH TENSIONS HIGH

A small boat crew from a Navy ship rescued a woman, a girl and their pets from a sailboat beset by weather offshore Hawaii. (U.S. Coast Guard District 14 Hawaii Pacific)

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At 5 p.m. on Aug. 28, the William P. Lawrence moored at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu, where representatives from the Coast Guard and the Honorary Consul of France in Hawaii received and provided care for the survivors.

"Through tireless planning, coordination and teamwork, our watchstanders pieced together the key elements needed for such a dynamic search and rescue case," said Kevin Cooper, search and rescue mission coordinator, JRCC Honolulu. "The use of an EPIRB was also crucial and allowed our aircrews and partners to pinpoint the sailboat’s location. We are grateful the crews of the Seri Emperor and William P. Lawrence were able to reach the mother and daughter, who were caught right in the path of Hurricane Gilma."

The sailboat remains adrift about 1,000 miles east of Honolulu, the Coast Guard said.

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Friends' sailing adventure ends in a dramatic rescue after a whale sinks their boat in the Pacific

What started as a sailing adventure for one man and three of his friends ended in a dramatic rescue after a giant whale sank his boat, leaving the group stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for hours and with a tale that might just be stranger than fiction.

Rick Rodriguez and his friends had been on what was meant to be a weekslong crossing to French Polynesia on his sailboat, Raindancer, when the crisis unfolded just over a week ago.

They had been enjoying some pizza for lunch when they heard a loud bang.

"It just happened in an instant. It was just a very violent impact with some crazy-sounding noises and the whole boat shook," Rodriguez told NBC's "TODAY" show in an interview that aired Wednesday.

"It sounded like something broke and we immediately looked to the side and we saw a really big whale bleeding,” he said.

The impact was so severe that the boat's propeller was ruptured and the fiberglass around it shattered, sending the vessel into the ocean.

As water began to rush into the boat, the group snapped into survival mode.

"There was just an incredible amount of water coming in, very fast," Rodriguez said.

Alana Litz, a member of the crew, described the ordeal as "surreal."

"Even when the boat was going down, I felt like it was just a scene out of a movie. Like everything was floating," she said.

Rodriguez and his friends acted fast, firing off mayday calls and text messages as they activated a life raft and dinghy.

He said he sent a text message to his brother Roger in Miami and to a friend, Tommy Joyce, who was sailing a "buddy boat" in the area as a safety measure.

“Tommy this is no joke," Rodriguez wrote in a text message. "We hit a whale and the ship went down."

"We are in the life raft," he texted his friend. "We need help *ASAP."

Raindancer sank within about 15 minutes, the group said. Their rescue took much longer that, with the four friends out on the open waters for roughly nine hours before they could be sure they would live to tell the tale.

Peruvian officials picked up the group's distress signal and the U.S. Coast Guard was alerted, with its District 11 in Alameda, California, being in charge of U.S. vessels in the Pacific.

Ultimately, it was another sailing vessel, the Rolling Stones, that came to the group's aid after Joyce shared the incident on a Facebook boat watch group.

Geoff Stone, captain of the Rolling Stones, said they were about 60 or 65 miles away when his crew members realized that their vessel was the closest boat.

After searching the waters, they were eventually able to locate the group of friends.

“We were shocked that we found them," Stone said.

The timing of the rescue, which unfolded at night, appeared to be critical as the Stones' crew members were able to see the light from the dinghy bobbing in the darkness.

Rodriguez lost his boat and the group of friends said they also lost their passports and many of their possessions, but they said they were just grateful to be alive.

The severity of the injuries sustained by the whale were not immediately clear.

Kate Wilson, a spokeswoman for the International Whaling Commission, told The Washington Post, which first reported the story, that there have been about 1,200 reports of whales and boats colliding since a worldwide database launched in 2007.

Collisions causing significant damage are rare, the Coast Guard told the outlet. It noted that the last rescue attributed to impact from a whale was the sinking of a 40-foot J-Boat in 2009 off Baja California. The crew in that incident was rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter.

One member of Raindancer's sailing crew, Bianca Brateanu, said the more recent incident, however harrowing, left her feeling more confident in her survival skills.

“This experience made me realize how, you know how capable we are, and how, how skilled we are to manage and cope with situations like this,” she said.

In an Instagram post, Rodriguez said he would remember his boat "for the rest of my life."

"What’s left of my home, the pictures on the wall, belongings, pizza in the oven, cameras, journals, all of it, will forever be preserved by the sea," he said.

"As for me, I had a temporary mistrust in the ocean. But I’m quickly realizing I’m still the same person," Rodriguez wrote. “I often think about the whale who likely lost its life, but is hopefully ok. I'm not sure what my next move will be. But my attraction to the sea hasn’t been shaken."

Chantal Da Silva reports on world news for NBC News Digital and is based in London.

Sam Brock is an NBC News correspondent.

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Rescued New Jersey boaters recall being lost at sea: 'It sounded like the devil was out there'

Kevin Hyde and Joe Ditomasso, who left Cape May in a 30-foot sailboat, returned to New York safely Wednesday night.

STATEN ISLAND, New York -- Two missing sailors from New Jersey, who were lost at sea for more than a week after heading to Florida, are now sharing their journey upon returning to land and reuniting with their families.

Kevin Hyde, 65, Joe Ditomasso, 76, and their dog named "Minnie" returned safely to New York City Wednesday night.

Not only were they dry, but they were also in good spirits as their long and dangerous journey finally came to an end.

"My granddaughter and the cross of Jesus. Every morning I'd wake up and kiss it and say the Our Father. And if nobody does not believe there's a Lord, they have a problem," Ditomasso said.

SEE ALSO: Missing boaters who left Cape May en route to Florida found safe off Delaware

Ditomasso said he thought he would never see his family again.

The 76-year-old along with his friend Kevin Hyde and their dog were rescued Tuesday by the U.S. Coast Guard, roughly 214 miles east of Delaware.

"If you look at the size of his ship and the size of the ocean, compared to this toothpick I'm floating around in, just to be able to spot that, because of the diligence of his crew," Hyde said.

Chopper video captured the Silver Muna crossing under the Verrazzano Bridge to reunite the boaters with their families Wednesday night.

The commercial tanker was carrying fuel from Amsterdam to New York when its crew somehow spotted them.

"God send our Silver Muna ship to save them because we didn't receive any distress signal, nothing," Silver Muna Captain Neerah Chaudhary said. "My second officer just noticed there was something."

Capt. Zeita Merchant, New York commander of the Coast Guard Sector, said it was a massive rescue effort.

It spanned over 2,100 square miles, from Miami to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The boaters departed Cape May, New Jersey, where they are from, on November 27 on a 30-foot sailboat headed for Florida.

They lost communication on December 3 in North Carolina. Ten days later they were off course. Way off course.

They had no fuel, no power, no radios, no navigation, and little food.

"We didn't have no more water left nothing," Ditomasso said. "We were sucking water out of the water lines. Cutting them just to get water. We didn't have water for two days. And Minn, we had to stop her from drinking. She wanted to drink everything."

Hyde said they turned south in Hatteras when a huge storm blew them off course. The sailors lost part of their mast.

"Once we cut that mast off, 40-foot seas. There were mountains, I was watching them," Ditomasso said. "I never heard a wind so bad. It sounded like the devil was out there."

When asked if they would do it all again -- they had mixed answers.

"Sure, why not. I'm not dead yet," Hyde said.

"No. I'm staying closer to shore," Ditomasso said.

Ditomasso had a special family member to thank for keeping him alive.

"All I asked the Lord was to see my granddaughter," he said.

Christmas with the family is what the two sailors said they are looking forward to the most now that they are back on land.

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As hurricane churned, Navy and Coast Guard rescued woman and girl from doomed sailboat

A woman and her 7-year-old daughter were rescued from a French-flagged sailboat 925 miles east of Honolulu last week after being stranded for several days in the Pacific Ocean after the ship's master died.

According to the U.S. Coast Guard, the woman and girl were caught in Hurricane Gilma. Officials said that after learning of a distress call on Aug. 24, a Coast Guard airplane spotted the sailboat. The crew of the Hercules aircraft could not establish direct communications with the woman but witnessed her light two distress flares as the sailboat took waves and wind from the hurricane.

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The Coast Guard said it requested assistance from the Navy’s U.S. Pacific Fleet and U.S. 3rd Fleet, which diverted the crew of USS William P. Lawrence. The Seri Emperor, a Singapore-flagged, 754-foot liquid petroleum gas tanker, was also diverted after receiving a request from the Coast Guard.

On the morning of Aug. 25, the Hercules crew tried to make contact with the woman. Later that evening, the crew of the Seri Emperor arrived on the scene but was unable to safely remove the woman and child from the vessel due to deteriorating weather conditions, the Coast Guard said.

On the morning of Aug. 26, a crew on the Navy's William P. Lawrence ship arrived, and was able to use a small boat crew to rescue the woman and girl. The Coast Guard said there was a deceased man on board the sailboat, but his body could not be recovered.

“I am extremely proud of the crew’s professionalism in planning and executing the safe recovery of two persons at sea on a disabled vessel in worsening conditions,” said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Bobby Wayland, commanding officer of William P. Lawrence. “My boat crew – in particular the coxswain – demonstrated deft boat handling and good judgement in approaching the distressed vessel and transferring the survivors. I also appreciate the remarkable coordination and information provided by the USCG throughout the entire operation – very cool to see the Navy / Coast Guard team work together so smoothly.”

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The woman and girl made it to Honolulu "safe and sound" on Aug. 28. The Honorary Consul of France was providing assistance to the family.

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‘God Sent Me to Save Them': How Dutch Oil Tanker Going to NYC Saved 2 Men Lost at Sea

By melissa colorado • published december 14, 2022 • updated on december 15, 2022 at 9:02 am.

Two friends from New Jersey – and a dog named Minnie – were lost at sea for days.

No mast. No power. No gas. No food. Barely any water.

But somehow, a crew from an international cargo ship spotted the group and rescued them using a cargo net.

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So how did the massive oil tanker heading from Amsterdam to New York stumble upon the battered sailboat lost at sea, carrying the two friends from Cape May, New Jersey, and Minnie the poodle — all of whom were on the brink of death?

The captain of the ship calls it divine intervention.

"God sent me to save them. God sent our Silver Muna to save them," said Captain Neeraj Chaudhary.

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WATCH: Boaters Who Were Stranded at Sea Share Their Survival Story

Missing Boaters and Their Dog Found Safe After Being Stranded at Sea for 10 Days

Kevin Hyde, a 65-year-old lifelong sailor, invited 76-year-old friend Joe DiTommasso and his poodle Minnie to join him on a sail trip to Florida aboard his sailboat, the Atrevida II.On Dec. 3, the trio sailed away from the Outer Banks of North Carolina after making a stop there.

Suddenly, the clear blue skies turned into the worst storm of their lives.

"I’ve never heard winds so bad my whole life! Sounded like the devil was out there," said DiTomasso.

Their 50-foot mast came crashing down. Without it, Hyde had no control over his sailboat. Their radios were now inoperable.

"We were just being pushed out to sea farther and farther," said Hyde. "It's like finding a needle in a haystack in this situation, the waves were bigger than my boat."

By the tenth day, there was no food left. Back home, their frantic families called the Coast Guard.

"We didn’t have no more water left, nothing. We were sucking water out of the waterlines," DiTomasso said. "She just kept me alive, all's I asked the Lord was to see my granddaughter."

Finally on Tuesday, a crew member from the Silver Muna oil tanker spotted the two weary sailors more than 200 miles off the coast of Delaware.

"We didn’t receive any distress signal nothing, my second officer just noticed something," Captain Chaudhary said.

Hyde said the vessel was "probably the last ship that would have been able to find" the two men and the dog.

While spotting them may have been a stroke of luck, getting Hyde and DiTomasso on board was far from easy. It took three hours to get them aboard the tanker, with cellphone video showing the crew use a cargo net to rescue the trio from the sailboat.

"I was literally crying. I was thanking God – thank God they are safe. Mr. Joe has cried 10 times on ship," said Chaudhary.

The ship captain from India may not be Santa Claus – but for two families, Chaudhary has given them the best gift of all: the return of a loved one.

"It is our duty, it is our duty what we have done," he said.

The two men were evaluated and were said to be physically OK, as was Minnie, and were looking forward to recuperating with their families over the holidays.

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A woman was stranded in the ocean for 12 hours. A novice boat captain saved her

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An extraordinary water rescue off the coast of Marina del Rey last month started with a pod of dolphins.

Or maybe it really began with a hernia and a new hobby.

Either way, the maiden open-water voyage of Khosrow Khosravani aboard his new sailboat took an unexpected turn in late September when he saw a single hand reaching up from the frigid waters of the Pacific Ocean.

A month after hoisting a naked, shivering woman onto the deck of his 25-foot boat, Khosravani still marvels at all that led him to being in the right place at the right time that day.

“I’m questioning how everything aligned,” the 59-year-old said. “I came from Iran 43 years ago. I don’t practice religion. But so many things went right for this lady. At the end of the day, I don’t believe it was divine intervention.”

He pauses for a beat before adding, “I’m a scientist, but thank God for all that did go right.”

A few years ago, a hernia injury sidelined the athletic Khosravani. Determined to stay active, he learned to swim by watching YouTube tutorials. An instant love of the ocean was born.

Khosravani moved to Marina del Rey in July and figured if everyone else had a sailboat, he would buy one too.

The former information technology expert, who had previously lectured on the university circuit, including at UCLA, had never navigated a boat. To prepare, he took courses approved by the American Sailing Assn. as well as the required online classes to get his California boater’s license. He studied the basics, including how to sail near the craggy coast.

And he learned how to pull someone out of the water if they went overboard.

On the morning of Sept. 26, Khosravani set sail from Marina del Rey for Paradise Cove near Malibu. It was his first time taking the boat into open waters, and he gave his three passengers a crash course in the event of an emergency.

About three miles off the coast, his party spotted a pod of dolphins. Khosravani tracked the animals as they crossed in front of the bow.

As a 9-year-old, she was saved at sea. Thirty-five years later, she reunited with her rescuers

After 20 hours in the Pacific Ocean, Desireé Rodriguez was the only one in her family left alive. She had almost given up. Then two fishermen spotted her.

March 10, 2021

“Once they passed was when I saw a hand in the water,” he said. “It was about one city block away. At that point, I wasn’t sure I saw what I saw. Then I was sure it was a human as we got closer.”

Khosravani’s training from a few weeks earlier kicked in. “It was all fresh in my mind,” he said.

He knew he had to maneuver his boat against the wind so it would not crash into the skull of the person bobbing in the water.

As he pulled alongside, he saw the pale shape of a young woman in the dark blue water. She was nude and barely staying afloat. Khosravani tossed a flotation device to her but she was too weak to grab onto it. He circled the Defiant back toward her, and one of his passengers threw another line, which she caught.

Khosravani turned off his outboard motor once the woman was close to the boat, then leaned over and managed to hook his arms beneath her armpits and yank her onto the deck.

His passengers rushed to wrap the woman in a blanket while Khosravani signaled mayday on his emergency radio.

Roughly six nautical miles away, L.A. County Fire Department ocean lifeguard Capt. Matt Rhodes heard the call. The details weren’t clear, but he caught what he needed to: A person had been pulled out of the water 3 miles from shore.

“Already, it felt like a weird one,” Rhodes said Thursday, recounting the rescue. “Why is there a person that far offshore?”

Rip currents can pull swimmers a couple hundred yards out from the beach, he said, but this was much farther away.

When Rhodes arrived at Khosravani’s boat, the woman’s skin was “ashen-colored” and she could barely speak.

She managed to tell him that she had gone skinny-dipping sometime around midnight off Venice Beach, 12 hours earlier. She had been in the water — whose average temperature off Malibu in September is 68.4 degrees — the entire time.

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April 14, 1998

The rescuers parted ways that day, uncertain what the woman’s fate would be.

“I know it’s an odd one, and when I tell people the story now, I have to preface by saying, ‘OK, I know you’re not going to believe this,’” Rhodes said. “If you told me that someone was floating in the open water for 10 to 12 hours without thermal clothing, I would look at you sideways.”

Rhodes said it’s a miracle the woman, who is in her mid-20s and has not been identified to protect her privacy, survived. They learned that she was hospitalized for three days and treated for hypothermia, then released.

“Without you there,” Rhodes said turning to Khosravani, “I’m almost certain she would have died.”

Although she has not reached out to the men who saved her, both Rhodes and Khosravani said they hope she knows people care for her.

“Wherever she is in life, I hope that she’s feeling — I don’t know the right word,” Rhodes said. “I just want her to know that there are people who care.”

Khosravani said he would tell the woman, “I’m so glad you’re alive. I’m glad you will hopefully have decades and decades of life ahead of you. The most important thing: This is a second chance; make it count.”

The at-sea rescue did not deter Khosravani’s enthusiasm for sailing. In fact, he recently sold the Defiant for a larger boat, which he named the Defiant II.

Rhodes joked that it would be harder for him to pull a person from the water onto a bigger boat. But Khosravani shot back that he now has more room to rescue people.

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Their Boat Hit a Whale and Sank. The Internet Saved Their Lives.

After the collision in the Pacific Ocean this month, Rick Rodriguez and three other sailors were rescued by a fellow boater, with an assist from a satellite internet signal.

By Mike Ives

When Rick Rodriguez’s sailboat collided with a whale in the middle of the Pacific Ocean earlier this month, it sank within about 15 minutes. But not before he and his three fellow mariners had escaped with essential supplies and cutting-edge communications gear.

One was a pocket-size satellite device that allowed Mr. Rodriguez to call his brother, who was thousands of miles away on land, from a life raft. That call would set in motion a successful rescue effort by other sailors in the area who had satellite internet access on their boats.

“Technology saved our lives,” Mr. Rodriguez later wrote in an account that he typed on his iPhone from the sailboat that had rescued him and his crew.

People involved in the roughly nine-hour rescue say it illustrates how newer satellite technologies, especially Starlink internet systems , operated by the rocket company SpaceX since 2019 , have dramatically improved emergency communication options for sailors stranded at sea — and the people trying to find them.

“All sailors want to help out,” said Tommy Joyce, a friend of Mr. Rodriguez who helped organize the rescue effort from his own sailboat. “But this just makes it so much easier to coordinate and help boaters in distress.”

Starlink’s service gives vessels access to satellite signals that reach oceans and seas around the globe, according to the company. The fee-based connection allows sailors to reach other vessels on their own, instead of relying solely on sending distress signals to government-rescue agencies that use older, satellite-based communication technologies.

But the rapid rescue would not have been possible without the battery-powered satellite device that Mr. Rodriguez used to call his brother. Such devices have only been used by recreational sailors for about a decade, according to the United States Coast Guard. This one’s manufacturer, Iridium, said in a statement that the device is “incredibly popular with the sailing community.”

“The recent adoption of more capable satellite systems now means sailors can broadcast distress to a closed or public chat group, sometimes online, and get an instant response,” said Paul Tetlow, the managing director of the World Cruising Club, a sailing organization whose members participated in the rescue .

A sinking feeling

Whales don’t normally hit boats. In a famous exception, one rammed the whaling vessel Essex as it crisscrossed the Pacific Ocean in 1820, an accident that was among the inspirations for Herman Melville’s 1851 novel “ Moby Dick .”

In Mr. Rodriguez’s case, a whale interrupted a three-week voyage by his 44-foot sailboat, Raindancer , from the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador to French Polynesia. At the time of the impact on March 13, the boat was cruising at about seven miles per hour and its crew was busy eating homemade pizza.

Mr. Rodriguez would later write that making contact with the whale — just as he dipped a slice into ranch dressing — felt like hitting a concrete wall.

Even as the boat sank, “I felt like it was just a scene out of a movie," Alana Litz, a friend of Mr. Rodriguez and one of the sailors on Raindancer, told NBC’s “Today” program last week. The story of the rescue had been reported earlier by The Washington Post .

Raindancer’s hull was reinforced to withstand an impact with something as large and heavy as a cargo container. But the collision created multiple cracks near the stern, Mr. Rodriguez later wrote , and water rose to the floorboards within about 30 seconds.

Minutes later, he and his friends had all escaped from the boat with food, water and other essential supplies. When he looked back, he saw the last 10 feet of the mast sinking quickly. As a line that had been tying the raft to the boat started to come under tension, he cut it with a knife.

That left the Raindancer crew floating in the open ocean, about 2,400 miles west of Lima, Peru, and 1,800 miles southeast of Tahiti.

“The sun began to set and soon it was pitch dark,” Mr. Rodriguez, who was not available for an interview, wrote in an account of the journey that he shared with other sailors. “And we were floating right smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a dinghy and a life raft. Hopeful that we would be rescued soon.”

‘Not a drill’

Before Raindancer sank, Mr. Rodriguez activated a satellite radio beacon that instantly sent a distress alert to coast guard authorities in Peru, the country with search and rescue authority over that part of the Pacific, and the United States, where his boat was registered.

In 2009, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescued a sailboat crew whose vessel had collided with a whale and sank about 70 miles off the coast of Mexico. But Raindancer’s remote location made a rescue like that one impossible. So in the hour after it sank, U.S. Coast Guard officials used decades-old satellite communications technology to contact commercial vessels near the site of the accident.

One vessel responded to say that it was about 10 hours away and willing to divert. But, in the end, that was not necessary because Mr. Rodriguez’s satellite phone call to his brother Roger had already set a separate, successful rescue effort in motion.

Mr. Rodriguez’s brother contacted Mr. Joyce, whose own boat, Southern Cross, had left the Galápagos around the same time and was about 200 miles behind Raindancer when it sank. Because Southern Cross had a Starlink internet connection, it became a hub for a rescue effort that Mr. Joyce, 40, coordinated with other boats using WhatsApp, Facebook and several smartphone apps that track wind speed, tides and boat positions.

“Not a drill,” Mr. Joyce, who works in the biotech industry, often from his boat, wrote on WhatsApp to other sailors who were in the area. “We are in the Pacific headed that direction but there are closer vessels.”

After a flurry of communication, several boats began sailing as quickly as possible toward Raindancer’s last known coordinates.

SpaceX did not respond to an inquiry about the system’s coverage in the Pacific. But Douglas Samp, who oversees the Coast Guard’s search and rescue operations in the Pacific, said in a phone interview that vessels only began using Starlink internet service in the open ocean this year.

Mr. Joyce said that satellite internet had been key to finding boats that were close to the stranded crew.

“They were all using Starlink,” he said, speaking in a video interview from his boat as it sailed to Tahiti. “Can you imagine if we didn’t have access?”

Of course, there was one sailboat captain without a Starlink signal during the rescue: Mr. Rodriguez. After night fell over the Pacific, he and his fellow sailors resorted to the ancient method of sitting in a life raft and hoping for the best.

In the darkness, the wind picked up and flying fish jumped into their dinghy, according to Mr. Rodriguez’s account. Every hour or so, they placed a mayday call on a hand-held radio, hoping that a ship might happen to pass within its range.

None did. But after a few more hours of anxious waiting, they saw the lights of a catamaran and heard the voice of its American captain crackling over their radio. That is when they screamed in relief.

Mike Ives is a general assignment reporter. More about Mike Ives

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Stranded sailboat crew of 4 hoisted to safety by Coast Guard

Four men stranded at sea last weekend were hoisted into a Coast Guard helicopter after 25-foot waves capsized their Mount Sinai sailboat 100 miles south of Long Island.

Coast Guard officers from the Air Station Cape Cod were called May 8 to rescue the Mount Sinai-based Calypso, which became marooned in the Atlantic while returning from a Bermuda-to-Connecticut sailing trip, Coast Guard Lt. Nick Zablotny said Saturday.

The 52-foot sailboat was tossed around in the open sea, and overturned, snapping the mast off before it righted itself, leaving the crew at the mercy of waves, wind and rain on Mother’s Day. The boat’s owner could not be reached Saturday to talk about the rescue.

“They just got unlucky because they hit the waves in a certain condition and some large wave knocked them over,” Zablotny said. “The weather got worse and they were hit by a wave and capsized and snapped off the mast. The ship was righted and it was dead in the water while they were tossed about by the waves."

The Coast Guard helicopter was called about 6 p.m. Sunday to an emergency position radio beacon and traveled 150 miles from Cape Cod to the disabled vessel. The crew piloted by Lt. Commander Dan Reilly and Zablotny arrived about 20 minutes before sunset to find the mangled ship being tossed at sea.

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Coast Guard officers captured the rescue on helmet cameras as they hoisted themselves into the water to rescue the crew. Rescue swimmer Ed Bizorik was lowered into the water first to assess the situation and found the Calypso’s tattered sail hanging among the wreckage in the water.

The four sailors, all in their 60s and 70s, stayed in the boat's cabin as it capsized and uprighted itself in the water. Temperatures had dropped to 40 with rain and winds up to 50 mph as the Coast Guard arrived.

“We determined they were all in pretty rough shape and mildly hypothermic,” Zablotny said. “They were not wearing the proper survival suits, just rain gear, and we realized we needed to hoist them from the vessel itself and not put them in the water,”

Typically, the helicopter moves crew members to a rescue basket waiting in the water so their equipment doesn’t get tangled with the boat. Zablotny said he couldn’t see the rescue below him, so he depended on fellow officers to guide the helicopter and lift the rescue basket off the boat. Coast Guard officers worked into the night to pull the four men off the boat to the helicopter hovering above.

One man on the Calypso had a gash across his forehead and another had broken ribs. The helicopter took the four men to Francis Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach, where Westhampton Beach firefighters were waiting with three ambulances.

“It got darker and darker and it seemed the seas started to pick up and we got rocked by a couple waves,” Zablotny said. “It was definitely a challenging rescue for us and [we're] excited we were able to get the job done.”

John Asbury is a breaking news and general assignment reporter. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously worked at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California.

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Watch: Sailor Rescues Stranded Swimmer Who Was in the Water for 12 Hours Off SoCal Coast

If she had not been found right then, a lifeguard believes she would have died within minutes, by jason kandel • published october 25, 2021 • updated on october 26, 2021 at 2:54 pm.

During an outing in his sailboat Defiant one Sunday in September, Koz Khosravani marveled at a pod of dolphins that swam near his boat and directed his gaze to the unthinkable — a hand surfacing in the choppy water.

Maybe he was seeing things, he thought. It could have been the glint off a dolphin's back, for all he knew.

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"I thought it was a mistake," he said.

He got closer and saw a woman floating on her back.

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He threw a floatation device into the water, but she couldn't hold onto it. Khosravani maneuvered his boat around for a better position. The rescuers tossed in a rope. She held on as they pulled her onto the boat to safety.

The rescuers wrapped the woman in a towel and blanket. Khosravani asked her name and whether anyone else was with her. She was alone.

Khosravani radioed for help — the first time using his radio in an emergency.

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"May Day. May Day. May Day. This is the sailing vessel Defiant in the Santa Monica Bay … Immediate medical emergency."

Matt Rhodes, a Los Angeles County lifeguard rescue boat captain, got the call before noon. He responded within minutes.

The young woman was not wearing any clothes. Her skin was the color of ash. She was hypothermic and barely coherent.

If she had not been found right then, Rhodes believes she would have died within minutes. She had been treading water for nearly 12 hours in 66 degree waters. "What are the chances another boater would have spotted her?" Rhodes said he thought.

"She's very lucky," said the 20-year lifeguard veteran. "She was in such a bad state that if she had not been picked up out of the water, wrapped in blankets … the potential for something really bad happening to her would have been much greater."

She told Rhodes and his partner that she got in the water at midnight in Venice to go for a swim. She said the current swept her offshore. The woman, who Rhodes did not identify due to medical privacy issues, was treated for hypothermia at a hospital and released three days later.

Khosravani, a former information technology professor, feels fortunate he was prepared to make a rescue. Fresh out of sailing school, he had the gear and the knowledge of ocean rescue.

"I was in the right place at the right time," he said.

He's not religious, but his being there that day makes him think twice that there was something larger at play. Buying a boat and safety gear, his training and the dolphins catching his eye, drawing his attention to the hand in the water -- all of that was no accident, he said.

"I think there was a reason they were there," he said. "I just cannot believe that at that moment they crossed in front of my boat."

"Part of it was just luck," he said. "Part of me believes there was something more to it."

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clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

Sailboat crew rescued in Pacific after abandoning ship sunk by whale

Four people aboard the Raindancer were stranded in the Pacific Ocean for 10 hours

His circumstances sounded straight out of “Moby-Dick,” but Rick Rodriguez wasn’t kidding. In his first text messages from the life raft, he said he was in serious trouble.

“Tommy this is no joke,” he typed to his friend and fellow sailor Tommy Joyce. “We hit a whale and the ship went down.”

“Tell as many boats as you can,” Rodriguez also urged. “Battery is dangerously low.”

On March 13, Rodriguez and three friends were 13 days into what was expected to be a three-week crossing from the Galápagos to French Polynesia on his 44-foot sailboat, Raindancer. Rodriguez was on watch, and he and the others were eating a vegetarian pizza for lunch around 1:30 p.m. In an interview with The Washington Post later conducted via satellite phone, Rodriguez said the ship had good winds and was sailing at about 6 knots when he heard a terrific BANG!

“The second pizza had just come out of the oven, and I was dipping a slice into some ranch dressing,” he said. “The back half of the boat lifted violently upward and to starboard.”

The sinking itself took just 15 minutes, Rodriguez said. He and his friends managed to escape onto a life raft and a dinghy. The crew spent just 10 hours adrift, floating about nine miles before a civilian ship plucked them from the Pacific Ocean in a seamless predawn maneuver. A combination of experience, technology and luck contributed to a speedy rescue that separates the Raindancer from similar catastrophes .

“There was never really much fear that we were in danger,” Rodriguez said. “Everything was in control as much as it could be for a boat sinking.”

It wasn’t lost on Rodriguez that the story that inspired Herman Melville happened in the same region. The ship Essex was also heading west from the Galápagos when it was rammed by a sperm whale in 1820, leaving the captain and some crew to endure for roughly three months and to resort to cannibalism before being rescued.

Coast Guard saves overboard cruise passenger in ‘Thanksgiving miracle’

There have been about 1,200 reports of whales and boats colliding since a worldwide database launched in 2007, said Kate Wilson, a spokeswoman for the International Whaling Commission. Collisions that cause significant damage are rare, the U.S. Coast Guard said, noting that the last rescue attributed to damage from a whale was the sinking of a 40-foot J-Boat in 2009 off Baja California, with that crew rescued by Coast Guard helicopter.

Alana Litz was the first to see what she now thinks was a Bryde’s whale as long as the boat. “I saw a massive whale off the port aft side with its side fin up in the air,” Litz said.

Rodriguez looked to see it bleeding from the upper third of its body as it slipped below the water.

Bianca Brateanu was below cooking and got thrown in the collision. She rushed up to the deck while looking to the starboard and saw a whale with a small dorsal fin 30 to 40 feet off that side, leading the group to wonder whether at least two whales were present.

Within five seconds of impact, an alarm went off indicating the bottom of the boat was filling with water, and Rodriguez could see it rushing in from the stern.

Water was already above the floor within minutes. Rodriguez made a mayday call on the VHF radio and set off the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB). The distress signal was picked up by officials in Peru, who alerted the U.S. Coast Guard District 11 in Alameda, Calif., which is in charge of U.S. vessels in the Pacific.

The crew launched the inflatable life raft, as well as the dinghy, then realized they needed to drop the sails, so that line attaching the life raft didn’t snap as it got dragged behind the still-moving Raindancer.

Rodriguez grabbed his snorkel gear and a tarp and jumped into the water to see whether he could plug the holes, but it was futile. The area near the propeller shaft was badly punched in, he said.

Meanwhile, the others had gathered safety equipment, emergency gear and food. In addition to bottled water, they filled “water bottles, tea kettles and pots” before the salt water rose above the sink, Rodriguez said.

“There was no emotion,” Rodriguez recalled. “While we were getting things done, we all had that feeling, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ but it didn’t keep us from doing what we needed to do and prepare ourselves to abandon ship.”

Rodriguez and Simon Fischer handed the items down to the women in the dinghy, but in the turmoil, they left a bag with their passports behind. They stepped into the water themselves just as the deck went under.

Rodriguez swam to the life raft, climbed in and looked back to see the last 10 feet of the mast sinking “at an unbelievable speed,” he said. As the Raindancer slipped away, he pulled a Leatherman from his pocket and cut the line that tethered the life raft to the boat after Litz noticed it was being pulled taut.

They escaped with enough water for about a week and with a device for catching rain, Rodriguez said. They had roughly three weeks worth of food, and a fishing pole.

The Raindancer “was well-equipped with safety equipment and multiple communication devices and had a trained crew to handle this open-ocean emergency until a rescue vessel arrived,” said Douglas Samp, U.S. Coast Guard Pacific area search and rescue program manager. He cautioned that new technology should not replace the use of an EPIRB, which has its own batteries.

Indeed, the one issue the crew faced was battery power. Their Iridium Go, a satellite WiFi hotspot, was charged to only 32 percent (dropping to 18 percent before the rescue). The phone that pairs with it was at 40 percent, and the external power bank was at 25 percent.

Rodriguez sent his first message to Joyce, who was sailing a boat on the same route about 180 miles behind. His second was to his brother, Roger, in Miami. He repeated most of what he had messaged to Joyce, adding: “Tell mom it’s going to be okay.”

Rodriguez’s confidence was earned. A 31-year-old from Tavernier, Fla., he had spent about 10 years working as a professional yacht captain, mate and engineer. He bought the Raindancer in 2021 and lived on her, putting sweat equity into getting the boat, built in 1976, ready for his dream trip.

Both he and Brateanu, 25, from Newcastle, England, have mariner survival training. Litz, 32, from Comox, British Columbia, was formerly a firefighter in the Canadian military. Fischer, 25, of Marsberg, Germany, had the least experience, but “is a very levelheaded guy,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez gave detailed information on their location and asked his brother to send a message via WhatsApp to Joyce, who has a Starlink internet connection that he checks more frequently than his Iridium Go. Because of his low battery, he told his brother that he was turning the unit off and would check it in two hours.

Rodriguez also activated a Globalstar SPOT tracker, which transmitted the position of the life raft every few minutes, and he broadcast a mayday call every hour using his VHF radio.

When he turned the Iridium Go back on at the scheduled time, there was a reply from Joyce: “We got you bud.”

As luck would have it, the Raindancer was sailing the same route as about two dozen boats participating in a round-the-world yachting rally called the World ARC. BoatWatch, a network of amateur radio operators that searches for people lost at sea, was also notified. And the urgent broadcast issued by the Coast Guard was answered by a commercial ship, Dong-A Maia, which said it was 90 miles to the south of Raindancer and was changing course.

“We have a bunch of boats coming. We got you brother,” Joyce typed.

“Can’t wait to see you guys,” Rodriguez replied.

Joyce told Rodriguez that the closest boat was “one day maximum.”

In fact, the closest boat was a 45-foot catamaran not in the rally. The Rolling Stones was only about 35 miles away. The captain, Geoff Stone, 42, of Muskego, Wis., had the mayday relayed to him by a friend sailing about 500 miles away. He communicated with Joyce via WhatsApp and with the Peruvian coast guard using a satellite phone to say they were heading to the last known coordinates.

In the nine hours it took to reach the life raft, Stone told The Post, he and the other three men on his boat were apprehensive about how the rescue was going to work.

“The seas weren’t terrible, but we’ve never done a search and rescue,” he said. He wasn’t sure whether they would be able to find the life raft without traveling back and forth.

He was surprised when Fischer spotted the Rolling Stones’ lights from about five miles away and made contact on the VHF radio.

Once it got closer, Rodriguez set off a parachute flare, then activated a personal beacon that transmits both GPS location and AIS (Automatic Identification System) to assist in the approach. Although the 820-foot Dong-A Maia, a Panamanian-flagged tanker, was standing by, it made more sense to be rescued by the smaller ship.

To board the Rolling Stones, the crew from the Raindancer transferred to the dinghy with a few essentials, then detached the life raft so it wouldn’t get caught in the boat’s propeller.

“We were 30 or 40 feet away when we started to make out each other’s figures. There was dead silence,” Rodriguez said. “They were curious what kind of emotional state we were in. We were curious who they were.”

“I yelled out howdy” to break the ice, he explained.

One by one, they jumped onto the transom. “All of a sudden, us four were sitting in this new boat with four strangers,” Rodriguez said.

The hungry sailors were given fresh bread, then were offered showers. The Rolling Stones crew gave their guests toothbrushes, deodorant and clothes. None even had shoes.

Rodriguez said he had tried not to think about losing his boat while the crisis was at hand. But, the first morning he woke up on Rolling Stones, it hit him. Not only had he lost his home and belongings, but he also felt as if he’d lost “a good friend.”

“I’ve worked so hard to be here, and have been dreaming of making landfall at the Bay of Virgins in the Marquesas on my own boat for about 10 years. And 1,000 nautical miles short, my boat sinks,” Rodriguez said.

The Rolling Stones is expected to arrive in French Polynesia on Wednesday, and Rodriguez is glad that he’s onboard.

“I feel very lucky and grateful that we were rescued so quickly,” he said. “We were in the right place at the right time to go down.”

Karen Schwartz is a writer based in Fort Collins, Colo. Follow her on Twitter @WanderWomanIsMe .

A previous version of this article misstated the size of the J-boat that sank in 2009. It was 40 feet.

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Boat capsizes off North African coast, one dead and 22 missing in latest migrant tragedy

by SAMY MAGDY | The Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — A boat carrying migrants capsized off the Libyan coast Tuesday, leaving one person dead and 22 missing, Libyan authorities said, the latest sea tragedy involving migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

The coast guard in the eastern Libyan town of Tobruk said the boat was carrying 32 migrants and that nine had been rescued. Survivors are being taken to a port in Tobruk, the coast guard said.

In recent years, the North African nation has emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. In December, at least 61 migrants, including women and children , drowned off the town of Zuwara on Libya’s western coast.

Libya was plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

Human traffickers have benefited from the disorder, smuggling migrants across Libya's extensive borders, which it shares with six nations. The migrants are crowded onto ill-equipped vessels, including rubber boats, and set off on risky sea voyages.

According to the missing migrants project run by the International Organization for Migration, at least 434 migrants were reported dead and 611 missing off Libya in the past eight months. More than 14,100 migrants were intercepted and returned to the chaos-stricken country.

Last year, the IOM reported 962 migrants dead and 1,563 missing off Libya. Around 17,200 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya in 2023, it said.

Those who are intercepted and returned to Libya are held in government-run detention centers rife with abuses, including forced labor, beatings, rapes and torture — practices that amount to crimes against humanity , according to U.N.-commissioned investigators.

The abuse often accompanies attempts to extort money from the families of the imprisoned migrants before allowing them to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats to Europe.