In Deep Water

Paul Le’s smile fades as he looks down at the deck toward the transom and engines. Water is pooling in the stern of his 24-foot Pro-Line. How did it get in? Could a little have come over the stern as the waves grew? Is there a leak below the waterline?

Paul shouts, “We have a problem!”

His friends Sonny Nguyen and Lu Nguyen (no relation) drop their rods and hurry to the stern. The three men, all in their early 40s, are 15 miles off the Louisiana coast tied to an oil rig where they’ve enjoyed a morning of fishing in October 2022.

“There must be a fair amount of water in the bilge,” says Sonny. “The stern feels lower than it should be.” He hangs over the side looking for damage. Everything looks fine.

“Let’s head in!” Paul shouts, holding his breath, hoping the engines start when he turns the key. Relief floods over the three men as the twin engines rumble to life. Lu casts them off the rig and notices the wind increasing.

Paul aims the Pro-Line toward shore, throttles up, and she responds. It’s 10:25 a.m. They have following seas, which helps propel them forward, but inch by inch the waves grow. In the short period from first noticing the water in the stern, seas have grown to nearly 4 feet.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Each time they crest a wave, the bow slams into the trough. The pounding makes matters worse. Paul eases off on the throttle.

“No!” shouts Sonny. “Speed up, speed up!”

Paul can feel the weight of the water in his b boat, which isn’t responding or riding as she should. Waves are still growing. He fears going any faster will surely sink the boat. Lu opens a compartment and tosses out the only two adult life jackets to Sonny and Paul, who are larger men, leaving two child-size life vests. He puts on an kid-size orange “Mae West” vest made of cloth and foam.

After plowing about a mile from the oil rig, a big wave crashes over the stern and the growl emanating from the engines suddenly stops. Both engines die. Except for the wind, there’s a sickening silence.

Their mayday calls over the radio have gone unanswered and their cellphones have no reception. Waves are now almost 5 feet, dark gray with crests of angry whitewater advancing on the waterlogged boat.

The boat sinks in less than a minute.

The only items the three men are able to grab before ending up in the water are two white coolers they tie together with Paul’s bandana. The coolers are their life raft. Inside are 12 small bottles of water. They have nothing else except the clothes on their backs, their useless cellphones, and the life jackets. No one ashore knows where they went fishing or when they planned to be back.

There are very few options about what to do next except try to swim back to the oil rig where they’d been fishing, more than a mile away. When in the trough of the waves, they’re surrounded by gray-green walls of water and can’t see more than a few feet. But as the next wave slides beneath and elevates them, they catch a glimpse of the rig.

Sonny shouts, “Let’s start kicking toward the rig with the coolers. If we make it, maybe we can climb on it or at least hold on.”

There’s no discussion. They now have a goal, a plan, something to keep the fear and despair at bay. Activity, any activity with a purpose, is what they need. It’s about 11 a.m. now. They must save themselves before nightfall.

After 30 minutes of kicking, they pause to rest. The sky is still clear, the water feels warm, and the waves haven’t increased, nor are they steepening. Paul apologizes again for the fix they’re in, then says, “Let’s agree we put all our focus on saving ourselves. Let’s not waste one breath talking about what happened with the boat or things we could’ve done differently.”

“Let’s just focus on our damn goal,” Sonny chimes in, “and we stay together no matter what.”

In the course of the next 28 hours of kicking, floating, and treading water, this agreement will be difficult to keep. There will be several life-and-death decisions they must get right in order to survive.

Three hours later, Lu looks out from the top of a wave and can see just how far away the rig still is. His spirits plunge. Steady, he tells himself. This will take time, but we can make it. Then a disturbing thought: I’ve caught sharks in these waters. He shakes his head to fling the thought out of his mind.

The strong currents in the Gulf sweep the men wide of the rig, so they set their sights on another one. But after three more hours of draining effort, the currents push them past that one as well. Night is closing in, there are shadows of large fish beneath them, and they have a more immediate problem: jellyfish.

Long tentacles extending from the jellyfish wrap around the fishermen’s legs, and the stings feel like electric shocks, pain radiating outward from the wounds. They push the gelatinous creatures away with their hands and cry out in torment. This continues into dusk, when the jellyfish move on.

By now the three men know they likely won’t be found until morning. They’ve consumed most of their bottled water, yet their muscles are cramping. Sonny thinks of his father, a shrimp boat captain who is dying from cancer, and vows to fight to the end. I’ve got to see my dad again.

The long night is filled with terror. Fish of different sizes bump into their legs and rub against them, waves catch them unaware, sending water up their noses and down their throats. Every now and then in the darkness one man calls out, “Are you guys all right?” They fear losing grip on the coolers and being swept away by a wave without the others knowing. These three men, friends since childhood, are determined to stay together.

But when dawn comes, something happens to change that view. They see a shrimp boat in the distance, perhaps 2 miles away. It appears to be at anchor or just drifting. Paul thinks, I got my friends into this terrible situation, maybe I can get them out of it. We can’t survive much longer. We’ll never make it to the boat with these coolers. I’ve got to get help. Without a word, he starts his solitary swim toward the boat.

“Paul! Paul!” shouts Sonny. Paul is about 10 feet ahead of the coolers and stops. Sonny sees Paul’s eyes are wide. His friend looks delirious. “Come back!” Sonny hollers. Paul looks back at his two friends, waits for the wave between them to move on, and shakes his head. “This might be our last chance!” he shouts and continues swimming toward the shrimp boat.

Lu is in a dazed shock. This wasn’t the plan. Paul is now 50 feet away, and Lu can catch only glimpses of him between waves. Did he just go under? Is he alive? Is he on the other side of the waves?

Sonny and Lu exchange glances. They don’t know how long Paul can stay alive without the coolers, and wonder if his reasoning had abandoned him under the crush of the stress and exhaustion. The experience is like watching a friend die before their eyes.

“We’re on our own,” says Lu. “Let’s keep trying for the shrimp boat.”

A couple hours later, a heartbreaking turn of events. The shrimp boat leaves just as Paul is within a quarter mile. He’s crushed, utterly spent and alone, waves pushing him to and fro.

He rests for a few minutes, knowing his end is near, and pulls his nearly dead phone out of his pocket. During the night he’d tried several times to use it – still no reception – and put it in airplane mode to conserve power. Gripping the phone with both hands close to his chest he uses his thumb to swipe out of airplane mode, and the phone starts dinging! It works!

With shaking hands, Paul steadies the phone as he bobs in the waves and taps on the text icon. Dozens of messages appear. His eye catches the battery symbol. There’s only 2% power left. His mind races. What to do first? The reception could drop at any moment and the battery feels like a ticking time bomb. He’s got to get this right.

He opens the most recent text from his friend Van, doesn’t read it, but instead carefully sends a reply: “Boat sank I’m floating in the Gulf.”

Van texts back: “OMG Bro, the Coast Guard is searching for y’all. Do you know where you’re at?”

Paul gets the message, his heart pounding, his phone about to lose power. Even shoved around by waves, he manages to open his Apple Maps application. The dot appears showing his location surrounded by blue ocean, nothing else visible. He slows his breathing, zooms out so land is showing, takes a screenshot of the image, and sends it to Van.

Van types back: “Am I the only one you got in contact with? Do you need me to send this to the Coast Guard?”

Paul starts to respond when his phone battery dies. Paul panics. No! No! No!

Van immediately calls the Coast Guard and is connected to Kevin Keefe who’s been coordinating the search for the missing boaters. The previous evening, family members of the boaters had told Kevin the three men never returned from a fishing trip. The search area had been the size of Rhode Island, with only a 1% probability of finding people alive in the water after so many hours. But now, with this screenshot map, Kevin could direct assets – a helicopter, a fixed-wing aircraft, and a patrol boat – toward that location. The screenshot didn’t have coordinates or mile markers, but Kevin and his team use it to narrow down the search area considerably.

Jayhawk helicopter pilots Travis Rhea and Katy Caraway are flying various search patterns over the ocean when they receive the news about the screenshot from one of the survivors. Almost at the same time, a fixed-wing aircraft piloted by Matt Marchalonis radios the helo crew that he’s spotted a survivor in the water.

Within minutes, the Jayhawk is hovering above Paul. Rescue swimmer Clark Hoefle sees several sharks circling below the victim, does a free fall into the water, and swims to Paul. An extra shot of adrenaline shoots through Clark’s body. Luckily both he and Paul are soon extracted from the water to the safely of the helicopter, where Paul shouts, “My two friends are down there somewhere. You have to find them!”

Lu can’t make it much longer. Exhaustion, dehydration, and hypothermia have taken their toll. He’s barely able to keep his head above water. Sonny promises to get him home one way or another, even if he has to stuff his body into a cooler. Lu prays for a quick and painless death because the suffering he’s endured is beyond even his most terrible nightmares. But it’s about to get much worse. A 9-foot tiger shark takes direct aim at his head.

In the last hours of this rescue, the terrified, exhausted men would have to survive a shark attack, then see more sharks circling them, moving closer and closer, not knowing that rescue was on the way. Finding these two specks in the vast, rough ocean would take every search-and-rescue skill the U.S. Coast Guard had. Time was of the essence.