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Five crew members credit personal locator beacon, received as a gift, for swift ocean rescue after boat sinks.
The five-member crew, left, with the Coast Guard rescuers who pulled them from the water.
Last Memorial Day weekend, Barrett was among five men participating in the annual Mary Walker Marina Snapper Showdown fishing tournament based in Gautier, Mississippi. Barrett was fishing with his business partner, one of their employees, and two friends. One of the crew, Connor Smith, arrived with a present from his girlfriend, an ACR ResQlink 400 PLB, which he tucked in a side pocket on his yellow ditch bag.
After spending the early morning catching bait, the group headed out around 8 a.m. for a spot to begin competing, with every boat expected back at the marina for an 8 p.m. weigh-in. About an hour into the run, slogging through 5- to 6-foot choppy seas, they slowed down to mark a spot and check the sonar. That’s when the alarm went off indicating one of the twin outboards had died. They turned around to find the cowlings of both engines partially submerged – and the boat was rapidly sinking stern-first. The crew rushed to grab inflatable life jackets as the boat sank from under them. “Within 45 seconds, it was gone – just like that,” Barrett snaps his fingers as he recounts the ordeal. “There was no oil slick and almost no debris. I was amazed to see the boat was there – and then it wasn’t.”
Besides the life jackets, Smith grabbed his ditch bag and activated the PLB from the water, but he had no idea if the distress signal was received. The buoyant ditch bag helped as a flotation device, and luckily one of the coolers floated, which they used to form a human chain to stick together in a ripping tidal current. “We drifted nearly 15 miles in about five hours,” says Easton, who kept his phone dry, but they were out of cellular range. And because competitive fishermen like their privacy, nobody was going to realize they were missing until the evening weigh-in.
They felt fish nibbling on their legs – or it could have been some of the live eels among the 200 pounds of bait that went down with the boat. When a large fish brushed against him, Easton immediately remembered how bull sharks tend to bump their prey before biting. Just then, after five hours in the water, a Coast Guard rescue boat arrived on scene.
“Words can’t describe how I felt,” he says. “I felt like I won the lottery because I won the life lottery.” Easton says he posted the first video as a message to home in case he and his crew didn’t make it. On the ride home, he posted a second video showing the exhaustion and relief among the group.
The seasoned angling crew ran through their usual predeparture safety check list on that fateful day and thought they had all the safety gear they’d need on board. The captain of the boat had brought his own PLB aboard – but it was buried in his fishing tackle bag, and he was unable to retrieve it before the boat took it 120 feet to the bottom.
After the incident, the crew agreed there will always be emergency locator beacons on board and accessible for their outings. Each of the men now encourage anyone heading offshore to wear a PLB or have an EPIRB on board the boat. And the skipper should ensure everyone knows what equipment is aboard, where it is, and how to use it. To hear the crew tell their story, check out this video from ACR’s Survivor Series promotion.