Lost in the Gulf Stream

[Bruce]

Tommy sent this to me and it quickly reminded me of the incident.
Pat and I had been hired to take an Ocean SF to Isla Mujeres. We left WPB for Key West, the jumping point to Mexico with a bunch of other SF for Sail Fish season. We got stuck in Key West for a few days with bad weather and finally departed. When we arrived, docked and slept, we awoke the next day to talk on the dock and the news that the Anhinga had been lost. They had left after us. Everyone on the dock was heartbroken, concerned and figuring out if we could do anything to help. If I remember right some boats crossing saw the trail of debris, slowed down and started looking for them.
The initial talk was that they torpedoed a wave and peeled the deck back, but this story is much more frightening. As a mariner who has traveled the oceans at one time I was thankful Pat had taught me to put all of your important papers like passports and stuff into a zip lock bag and carry on your person at all times whether your on duty watch or sleeping as anything can happen in a blink of an eye and he was right.
Still miss you brother.


Pickup Johnny's book and read it.
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Stream-Mira ... B0B7GTKYCM




“Lost In The Gulf Stream”



Johnny Savage will never forget 1998. That’s when he survived one of the earliest documented rogue waves in history, a story that the Virginia local and long-time offshore fisherman told in his book, Lost in the Stream: The Miraculous Story of Two Fishermen Lost at Sea. The then 26-year-old mate and his captain, Eric Bingham, had set off from Key West for a 350-mile daytime crossing to Cancun on the 56-foot Jim Smith boat, Anhinga. Here, Savage tells how they overcame an unthinkable challenge.

On April 13, 1998, we set underway just before light to be up and running as the sun came up. At about 9 a.m, we looked in front of us and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before; it was like a hole in the ocean. We were in a 2- to 3-foot following sea, and then it was just a hole. Basically, the whole boat fell off into it. It was a rogue wave. And within a couple minutes we were in the water without a distress call, an EPIRB, a life raft, life jackets, nothing. And the boat was down. A lot of people ask about the wave. I don’t know of any boat that could have made it through there.

As the boat went off the wave, I was standing up on the bridge next to Captain Eric at the helm. It was steep enough that I fell forward.

When the boat hit the bottom, I just heard this terrible “boom” and basically it was the bulkheads breaking. I think she broke her spine and then the pressure on the sides made the bow deck pop. When she hit, as I was freefalling forward, I was able to grab ahold of the tower—the tuna tower leg and rail at the front of the bridge—and I saw a crack running from the starboard side into the port side about a foot forward of where the bow deck met the house.

From that moment on I knew that this wasn’t going to be good. But even though I saw what I saw, and heard what I heard, I was still kind of expecting her to ride back up. But she didn’t. She just stuck and started to go down. She was gone pretty quick and Eric and I were in the water. We grabbed this little Igloo bait cooler, and we grabbed each other, and we immediately went into the Lord’s Prayer. We were by our-selves 90 miles out in the Lower Gulf where there’s not much traffic. Nobody else was around. And from there, that’s where the fight for survival began.

When we finished the prayer, the Anhinga popped back up. But she was upside down. It was just a small part of her bottom, a small piece of her stern with the wheels and rudders, with the air in her lazarette underneath the cockpit sending her back up. So, Eric went to the hull because that’s textbook. We can live out there a long time, but we got to be out of the water. Our bodies are not made to stay in that water. And at the same time, I looked over and that’s when I saw that my surfboard was floating in an old FCS board bag with a Mylar finish.

I saw it floating and I told Eric, “I think I need to get that.” And he’s like, “Alright. Go get it, buddy.” So I took off for the surfboard and that’s when I hit the diesel fuel, and I’ll tell you what, that’s when I knew where every single cut was on my body. I’d never gone swimming in diesel fuel before. It was in my eyes. It was in my mouth and my ears, just everywhere. And you know what my first thought was? “Please, Lord, don’t let me throw up. I can’t afford to lose this food that’s in my stomach from breakfast this morning. I’m going to need it to survive.” That was my mindset. It was, “So we got a job to do, and our job is to stay alive—whatever it takes.”

I actually made it to the surfboard. It was funny, just hopping on that surfboard trying to paddle because the fins are in the bag. You’re trying to paddle and the tail’s kicking around. It took a little while to get used to that.

Meanwhile, Eric had climbed onto the hull. But by the time I got the board and was heading back to him, she’d already gone back down. She was done. He was able to get ahold of an engine hatch from under the salon floor. That thing was a nightmare to hang onto because it would dig into your side. But he was holding onto that and then he was able to get his hands on one of the bridge cushions.

I remember feeling, “I can’t believe this, how is this happening?” There was nothing that anybody did wrong. It wasn’t like there was a wall of water that we saw. It was just like you run along and all of a sudden, there’s a cliff that you don’t see. There’s no fault. So, then we just knew, we’ve got to survive.

So we tried to collect things. Eric still had his glasses on, so, he gave me the glasses. I was kind of laying in the water, and we would switch holding the surfboard or holding the engine hatch cover because that was so uncomfortable. Eric would mainly scan the horizon and I would mainly try to look up into the sky for an airplane or something that might see us. One thing we tried not to do was look down. It’s pretty deep there. At one point some mahi did come swimming around us a little bit. It was so cool too because it was kind of a glimpse out of the peripheral, this little flash under the water. And then it was like, “Oh great, what’s going to be behind them?”

When we went down, it was 2- t0 3-foot seas. Beautiful, just perfect. Small groundswell, and they didn’t have any backsides to them. Maybe 12 knots of wind. But eventually a storm would come on us. And that got bad, really bad.

Several hours into it, the boat had formed debris lines. The Anhinga had formed one line of debris that went down sea, and then there was a branch that kind of went off diagonally to the left side that cut across the swell direction. The conversation we eventually had was related to those debris lines. We knew we were going to have to find the EPIRB.

At that point in time, I felt comfortable going down sea with the line of debris because I knew I could always follow that to get back to Eric. And so, I went out looking for the EPIRB.

I got to that intersection where that diagonal line went off and I remember the fear that I had when I started to make that left turn. It was like, “What happens if this separates?” I had to face that fear—that I could get lost from Eric and not have that up and down perspective if I went down that line looking for the EPIRB.

I paddled out for about a half hour to the end of that. By that time, I couldn’t see Eric in the distance at all. I found nothing. I made my way back to Eric and guess what—he’s got life jackets.

Not only did the life jackets end up floating right up to where Eric was, but also the twist lock flare kits—they floated up to where Eric was, too.

I’ll never forget when we went back to laying in the water. I remember seeing an airplane, and the hope that was in that airplane. We tried signaling, we used some smoke flares. Watching that plane go out of sight was really pretty crushing.

After maybe four hours at sea, we put the flare kit back together as the waves were starting to cap a little bit. A white cap hit, busted open one of the flare kits and we lost the bigger flare gun and the flares.

As more time went by, seas were building and there was a cruise ship that went past us.

We were holding flares up, trying to coordinate our orange smoke versus our red flares and thinking about the angle of the ship from the bridge. Okay, maybe somebody’s out on the wing. Then the side of the ship was towards us and it’s like, all these eyes, there’s got to be thousands of eyeballs on that ship. Somebody’s got to see us. And then to the stern and then seeing more of that stern quarter. People are always looking off the stern or looking at the wash. Maybe somebody’s going to be there. But no one saw us. That was the biggest blow that started leading my thoughts to a really negative place, which was, you are going to die out here.

We never expressed those thoughts to each other, even though they were prevalent. When the seas were probably a solid 6 or 7 feet, and the debris line was starting to break up, Eric and I finally had this hard conversation and it was this: “If we don’t find that EPIRB, we’re going to die out here.”

I knew what that meant because by this point in time Eric had lost a lot of his feeling in his lower extremities. He wasn’t capable of going out to search.

At that moment, when I had to go out, I knew that if I found the life raft it would only do me good. There’s no way I’d be able to get that back to Eric in those sea conditions. But in his gentle way of doing so, I was given an order, a command. And the way it is on a boat, when the captain gives you an order, you do it.

I said, “Okay, Cap.” And I explained to him, “Look, I don’t feel like I did a good job of covering that diagonal line.” Now I was already feeling like a failure. Failed with the life raft and the EPIRB. Failed with the airplane. Failed with the cruise ship. I was a failure. And now you’re relying on me, a failure, to go out and save us?

But the last thing I said to him before I left was, “Cap, when I find that EPIRB, and I activate it, we aren’t going to stop looking until we find you.” I knew that he knew that they would come to me. Feeling like I would be abandoning my captain was pretty tough.

So I took off and it’s probably blowing a good solid 20 now and the wind is going across the swell direction. It’s getting more like a washing machine, basically. So, I got to that point again where I could recognize the split in the debris line and I knew that I needed to cover that other line more diligently. I’d hoped that maybe in that timeframe since I’d left, the EPIRB had popped up. But I got to the end of that line and didn’t find it. And by this point, because of the wind and the waves and the white caps and everything else, the debris line was really busting up bad. I had gone out farther than I had the first time. So, I was like, there’s no way, I’m lost. There’s no way I’m going to find Eric, I thought. And that’s when I started to allow the thoughts to really dig in, the thoughts of, you’re a failure. You’re going to die out here, and Eric’s going to die out here because you failed. You’re getting cold. And that was one of the things, something that I distinctly remember. It was like, man, you’re getting cold, your core is dropping, and you can’t control it.

I allowed my mindset to carry me to where I rationalized killing myself. I made sense of ending my life. I knew I had two options. One was, I was going to drown. The other was, I was going to get ripped apart by sharks. I rationalized it. I would rather drown than get eaten alive by sharks. I figured that drowning would be less painful. And as somebody who was doing a lot of free diving at the time, I knew my limits; how deep I needed to go, the exhale and shoving myself down even further, knowing that I was at my limits. I just figured it would be that gulp, and that convulsion, and then that would be it. Before I did it, I thought about my family. That was one of the hardest things to think about in the water, was the people I had to say goodbye to.

So, I said my prayers like, “Lord, there’s the only way out of this and please forgive me for what I’m about to do. I don’t want to do it, but this is it.” And it was in that process, that’s when He showed up and stopped it. Pretty much, God showed up.

As I was in that process of rolling under, all of a sudden, my body filled with strength and warmth. That stopped me. I was like, what in the world just happened? It was in that moment, over my right shoulder, I heard, “John, you spent a lot of time out here, pick your line and paddle it.”

On a rough sea, the ocean consumes all sound. I don’t know how I was able to hear that and experience the feeling of warmth and strength and power and just faith that overcame my body. Everything in front of me said, you’re going to die. But I knew in my heart we were going to make it. That’s powerful.

I paddled back to Eric. “Sorry, captain,” I said. I felt bad but I was full of joy at the same time. I didn’t find the EPIRB. But he’s like, “That’s all right, buddy. Look what I found.” And he holds up my backpack. I’m like, “Eric, have you looked in the backpack?” He’s like, “No, I haven’t looked in the pack.” I’m like, “There are wet suits in the backpack.”

So, Eric put the thicker suit on because he really needed to protect what he had in his core. I put on the shorty and got down in the water and let him get on the surfboard as much as he could.

We made a decision. We weren’t going to separate anymore. In the surfboard bag there were leashes and we used them to connect each other. So this is when it was blowing 25 with 8—foot seas. There were times where a cap would break on us and send us tumbling underwater and we’d come up, just gasping for air.

One of the things that people wouldn’t think about is the Portuguese Man O’ War. What we would do is just kind of lay in the water and watch each other, and then we’d have to communicate. All right, we got to try to dodge left or dodge right because the Man O’ War would come. We figured, if we got wrapped up in one of those things, it would take a lot out of us.

Then I saw a flare floating about 50 yards away from us. And I told Eric, “I don’t know if that’s a good flare or not.” It was one of the stick flares. He said, “All right, buddy. Go get it.” And that wasn’t an easy process, just the timeframe of being at peaks and being in troughs, trying to keep an eye on where that was. So, I get to it and it’s good. I’m all excited. “Hey, it’s good, it’s good,” I yell, but he can’t hear me and I can’t hear him because of the wind. I started making my way back to him, but as I got closer, I could tell he was screaming, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

My initial thought was, he’s getting ripped apart by sharks. So, I just started digging toward him as fast and as hard as I could swim. Fortunately for us, it wasn’t sharks. As I got closer to him, I could hear him screaming, “It’s a fish boat. It’s a fish boat. It’s a fish boat.”

When I got to him, Eric was already rolling off the surfboard as I struck the flare. All this was in perfect unison. As he rolled off, he reached up and the flare went in his hand. I went into the bag, got the last bullet loaded in and got up on the surfboard. This boat was off to the side, a half, a quarter mile away, running along. But because it was so rough, they weren’t making much time, maybe 10, 12, something like that.

But even at that speed, when the bow came down, the spray would come up and they wouldn’t be able to see. So, I was thinking how I had to time this, so that he would see that fireball and not have it be covered by spray. I was just at the point of getting ready to squeeze the trigger, and suddenly, I turned around and looked, and Eric and I were right off the very point of the bow of another boat. The next thing was like, “Oh no, we get chopped up.”

And then the captain held it off, spinning it around to Eric and me.

They opened the tuna door on the back of that big old Viking and I’ll never forget Eric, kind of broken, just watching me get up inside the boat. I’ll never forget the feeling of guilt that I had because I went into that cockpit before my captain. I don’t know where the strength came from, but I was scrambling to get back and grab Eric. I helped drag him in the boat. I remember watching the surfboard kind of float off to the side and Eric just looked at me and was like, “Hey buddy, I’m sorry about your surfboard.” And I’m like, “Don’t worry about the surfboard.”

It was about to get dark. And even though I had great faith at that moment with what had happened, I kind of knew that we might not make it through the night. With Eric’s condition of advanced hypothermia, people had said that he wouldn’t have made it much longer.

So, we get inside, and they had brought us some clothes to try to keep us warm. When the captain came down, the first thing he asked was, “Well, y’all want a rum and Coke?” We were like, “Only water. Water. We just want water, please.”

From then on, I remember Eric and me laying there on the floor in the salon and all I could do was just stare at the ceiling and it was like everything in my brain was blank.

Very rarely would I tell the story. There had been a few magazine articles written about it. Nothing to the degree, especially of what we’re going to do now. I guess one part of it is understanding the fishing world and understanding that I did not want to be known because I went for a long swim one day. I wanted to be known because I was a good fisherman, hopefully. Because I had achieved the ranks to be able to fish with some of the best. Everybody knew what happened, but what I didn’t realize was that there were so many people that didn’t want to ask me about it out of respect. This story back then did not have the power to change people’s lives like it does now. That’s the best way to put it.

Editor’s Note: Today, Savage volunteers for Valhalla’s Mission Force, a nonprofit that honors deceased veterans and their families, where he uses his own story to give hope to those in grief over the loss of their fallen soldiers. Since the publication of his story, Savage has learned of several people who wanted to end their lives but who read his book and found the hope to carry on.

[SteveM]

"how about a rum and coke?"

I don't think that guy understood the severity of their condition.

Reading this makes me prepare even more.

The falling off the wave description is interesting. I was expecting him to say the rogue wave engulfed over them.

[Carl]

"how about a rum and coke?"

I don't think that guy understood the severity of their condition.

Or he understood it all too well trying to add levity to the situation.

It is something that makes me think. But not too much or I'd never leave the dock...mother nature can be more than scary at times. I've never heard of "just dropping off". I wonder if possibly they were running a small sea on a huge swell. That I have experienced after a hurricane going to an inlet. Running along on a calm day...boat labors some, then seems to pick up and labors again. Everything looked good and I was the only person who noticed. Getting close I started to look for the jetty which should be right about here...nothing...nothing and suddenly a light stanchion emerged, rocks, now it's a full jetty like a submarine surfacing...and slowly it went back down. Sure enough looked at the depth finder and I was in a huge swell. But could a swell have an abrupt edge on a somewhat flat sea...maybe over a shallower bottom.

Crazy to think its possible, I wasn't too thrilled to know rogue waves were true...but could at least keep an eye out for one. Ugh

Keep papers on my person...makes sense as does a ditch bag.

Thanks, the book will be ordered. Although I'm not sure a good read.

[Ironworker]

I listened to a podcast where this guy discussed the incident and his book.

[Rawleigh]

I had a friend a couple of years ago that was running a Buddy Davis up from Hatteras to Virginia Beach solo. Not the smartest thing he ever did! It was September I believe and some pretty big squall lines were coming through and he saw what he thought was a squall line in the distance. Turns out it was a rogue wave! He turned into it but the wave broke over the bridge, blew out the storm curtains and washed him over the rail and down into the cockpit. He came to washing back and forth in the cockpit with a broken neck. He was able to call the Coast guard and they helicoptered him into Elizabeth City. After a long recuperation he is okay. The boat survived and he still has it. Thanks goodness he was in a strong boat! The ocean is not something to be taken lightly. There is a lot about it we still don't understand.

[Amberjack]

The falling off the wave description is interesting. I was expecting him to say the rogue wave engulfed over them.
[/quote

Not unheard of Steve. In the late 70’s I lived in Ballard which was the Alaska king crab fleet home port. My neighbor was a tax attorney with a lot of crab boat owners for clients. One of them was heading out to the crabbing grounds for the winter opening in the late 70’s. King crab in the 70’s was a gold rush fishery without individual quotas so when the limit was reached the fishery closed, sometimes in days. So they went out regardless of the weather and crabbed straight through. This boat was heading north in moderate weather (I.e. rough but OK) and they were up in the wheelhouse taking it easy when the boat just fell into a hole in the water and smacked into the bottom of the hole. They all went flying but the boat was on auto pilot and upright so it started to climb up the other side of the hole. It got part way up and fell off sideways landing on its side and smashing all the glass out of that side of the deckhouse which started to flood. That’s how they got out, through the broken windows, because they couldn’t reach the up side of the wheelhouse. They were picked up by another boat traveling with them.

This was told directly by the boat owner to Dennis and I don’t think Dennis elaborated when he told it to me. My guess is it was a big hole between two rogue waves. Because of the tax laws the owner/skipper had no choice but to roll the insurance settlement into another boat and go back out crabbing.

[Tony Meola]

I never heard of falling off a wave that large. Most of the time it is on the bow. I would have expected that in a heavy sea, but in two to three footers.

I have never seen a rogue wave and hope I never do.

[Carl]

Scary thought without a doubt to just drop into a hole at sea. I guess if the rogue waves they say are true is a combination of waves kinda joining force and going high, then they could also go low...scary as the warning is not there, not that there is much of one with it going up...but at least my mind has a way to wrap itself around that scenario, bow in. What does one do when the water isn't there...besides pray.
Scary...I think I'm glad to have learned this.

[Amberjack]

The Anhinga story Bruce posted and my crab boat skipper's story are remarkably similar, except for the sea state as Tony pointed out. We don't hear about it much but this phenomenon must occasionally occur. It makes me wonder how many times it has happened and no one survived to tell the story.

[Carl]

Bruce’s book of the month suggestion was a good read. Thank you

[DCJ]

Catching up on latest and greatest ideas and comments. Been busy with 31 project, Rv trips, grandkids and a little farming. After reading Bruce’s post it brought back a haunting memory. I think everyone who owns a Bertram has seen the poster/painting with the script “Thank God it’s a Bertram!!” Which shows a rogue wave encounter off of Cabo. I didn’t take the matter very seriously until about 10 years ago our elderly rural community neighbors were taking a stroll along the beach in Cabo and a rogue wave came ashore and they both drowned. Needless to say I’m am now a believer! Totally shocked the community. Don’t no about the hole thing but hey, it’s a big ocean.