More than an hour after their 27-foot Pro-Line capsized in eight-foot seas off St. George Island in the Florida Panhandle, Barry Rowles and his two friends thought they were going to die. “We all had come to the realization that this is the way it was going to be,” he told the Tallahassee Democrat. “Nobody is coming to get us.”
The trip started normally enough, with Rowles, John Human and John Humphrey heading out for some offshore fishing in just a three-foot chop. But when they were about 12 miles offshore a mid-day storm hit quickly and an eight-foot rogue wave broke over the boat. Another wave shorted out and killed the engines. A third one half filled the Pro-Line with water.
The three men managed to transmit a Mayday call with their GPS coordinates just before the boat capsized. In the wind and rain they got off with just two life jackets and a white cooler, and they clung to the capsized boat, hoping that someone would rescue them.
As it turned out, the nearest Coast Guard vessel was three hours away. But four fishermen, Charlie Putnam, Cody Smith, and Louie and Dillon Ward, heard the Mayday and wrote down the coordinates. They were more than an hour away at their 7-knot speed, but they also were the closest boat. They told the Coast Guard they were on their way.
The fisherman reached the overturned Pro-Line just before dark, and managed to get all three men on board safely. Back on shore, Rowles praised the fisherman. “That was pretty brave of them to ride in to eight-foot seas and go ten miles out to rescue people they didn’t even know,” he said. “Those guys, they’re my heroes.” Read more:
