Marion Bae, FISM News
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On Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued three boaters approximately 25 miles off the coast of Empire, Louisiana, after they spent 28 hours in the Gulf of Mexico fighting for their lives.
The rescue occurred after the Coast Guard had dispatched multiple aerial and boat units to search a 1,250-square-mile area. A report from a worried family member prompted the search after the boaters didn’t return home on Saturday night.
On Wednesday morning, two of the boaters were reunited with their rescuers and each other on NBC’s “Today.” Luan Nguyen and Phong Le were able to give more details on the events that occurred during those 28 hours. The third boater, Son Nguyen, was still recovering.
The boat crew set off into the Gulf of Mexico to fish for Red Snapper on Saturday morning. They had tied their 24-foot center console boat to a nearby oil rig while they were fishing, but then the waves became increasingly worse, causing the back of the boat to take on significant water and start capsizing.
“It was like the perfect storm, for the perfect accident,” Le told the Today hosts, remembering the events.
Being experienced fishermen, they quickly grappled for their life vests and tied two ice chests together with Le’s bandana to form a make-shift raft. Their goal was to try to push toward the oil rig so that they could make a distress call, but they were unable to make it there.
Over the course of the night, they remember being stung by large jellyfish while they held onto each other for warmth.
In the morning, Le made a last-ditch effort to get help by attempting to swim to a shrimp boat they saw in the distance, but as he was closing in it started going in the opposite direction.
It was then that the cell phone he had carried throughout the ordeal finally got a signal, and text messages poured in. He quickly took a screenshot of his location and sent it to a friend. The Coast Guard was able to use the image to get an estimated location and ultimately pull them to safety.
The boaters were first spotted by an aerial unit before a 45-foot response boat arrived. The rescue boat crew witnessed two of the stranded boaters fending off sharks with injuries to their hands. They quickly brought the two aboard to prevent further injuries while the third boater was lifted by an MH-60 Jayhawk.
The other two were transferred to the Jayhawk so that they could all be taken to University Medical Center New Orleans. One boater was said to have signs of hypothermia at the time of rescue, but all were reported to be in stable condition at the hospital.
“We searched an area roughly the size of Rhode Island and are thankful to have found these missing boaters,” Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Keefe, a Sector New Orleans Search and Rescue Mission Coordinator, said in a statement.
If the family member had not notified the Coast Guard, and if these three boaters were not wearing life jackets, this could’ve been a completely different outcome. We appreciate the assistance of the boating public, who were instrumental in helping identify possible areas where these boaters could have been operating before the vessel became in distress.