Sascha Scheller is a lucky man. He fell off his fishing boat 40 miles off Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, recently, when he lost his footing while relieving himself. He had been fishing by himself. As he hit the water, he saw his boat going off without him.
About two hours later, Scheller was saved by a father-and-son team, who also had been out fishing, found his empty boat, and were able to use GPS tracking to help figure out where Scheller might be.
Andrew Sherman, 50, and his son, Jack, 21, are ardent fisherman. They’re from Roanoke, Virginia, but spend summers at Topsail Beach, North Carolina. On a recent day they headed offshore, fishing for mahi. They had no luck.
After several hours, they turned off their engine, just to relax for a while. Then, according to the Wilmington Star News, Andrew looked up and saw another fishing boat heading right for them. Afraid of a collision, he turned the engine back on to get out of the way.
But when the other boat got closer, the Shermans realized no one was driving it. They yelled and yelled, but got no reply. Andrew maneuvered next to the other boat and Jack climbed on board. “It was like a ghost ship,” he said later.
The Shermans called the Coast Guard to alert them to a likely man-overboard situation. Then the father son, in two separate boats, started their search. They followed the GPS waypoints on the ghost ship to retrace its position.
After half an hour, Andrew found Scheller treading water and pulled him on board. Scheller figured he had been in the water for two hours or so. He gave Andrew a hug and said the Shermans were heroes.
Later Scheller posted on Facebook, “I was the guy that was lost 40 miles offshore in the water as my boat drove off without me.” He said he always goes fishing equipped with lots of safety gear, including a lifejacket with a whistle, a handheld strobe, a waterproof VHF, and an EPIRB.
But this day, he said, “I got too comfortable and decided with the conditions of the ocean being as good as it gets, decided to take my life jacket off for a bit, which I never do when I’m by myself. While taking a moment to relieve myself off the side of the boat, I somehow lost my footing and in less than a split second I was in the water and my boat is driving off without me.” Read more:
