Here’s a great story from FlaglerLive about how six people were rescued after their 23-foot center console capsized 10 miles off Flagler Beach in Florida. A passing boat rescued them in 15 minutes or so, but they also had some high-tech help from Siri and Pandora. Read it here:
The four men and two boys were rescued and made it safely back to shore after their boat sank 10 miles offshore of Flagler Beach the morning of July 10, so this much they can laugh about now: after the 23-foot center-console fishing boat had rapidly taken on water and capsized, leaving its occupants barely enough time to put on their life jackets, Jason Arnett managed to pull out his phone and was desperate to try to reach his wife.
We had sent that Mayday, ‘Hey, we’re going down, we’re going down,’ we never got a copy back from them because the boat went down so quick,” Arnett said of the Coast Guard. “At that time, I took my phone out of the bait bag. And I was trying to call my wife to tell her to call the Coast Guard and give her updated coordinates and whatnot. And when I tried to call her, I couldn’t. My phone was wet. My hands were wet. I couldn’t touch the screen on my phone. So it’s a little scary because I couldn’t make my phone work by touching it. And if I tried to push a number I’d push a different number, or it would push anything at all. So I was having Siri call her by voice. But she wasn’t answering.
“So I actually do home automation and smart homes for a living. And I have a smart home at my house. So the way I was able to get her up at 7 a.m. was, I logged into my smart home from my phone. And I blasted music. I mean I’m blasting music all across the house.” It was Pandora. It happened to be “The Humpty Dance.”
“That’s what I do when she’s not answering and it’s an emergency. Turn on music–never as loud as I did Saturday,” Arnett said. “I blasted it. My 17 year old son actually got up and was all mad because he got woke up. He just walked around to turn all the music off. But as soon as my wife heard it, she knew exactly what it was. And she called me back within 10 seconds.” Read more:
