Having been in the Coast Guard the past 14 years, I’ve been a part of countless rescues of varying degrees. However, one will always stand out for me as the most memorable.
In 1997, I was stationed aboard a 110 foot patrol boat in Miami. My first trip aboard that cutter was a 5 week patrol off of Puerto Rico and Haiti. On the last day of the trip, we fueled up for the 26 hour, full speed trip home; we were anxious to get back. As we sped home in the afternoon, we were off the Northeast coast of Cuba when we received a message from the district operations center that we were to divert for SAR. Dreaded words for a homeward bound cutter.
It seemed that the district office was picking up intermittent EPIRB signals from an area not far away from us. A responding CG helicopter found nothing in the area. We were tasked with executing search patterns all night, and we were convinced that this was yet another false alarm. It’s always a false alarm. But we always have to go, so we go. We searched a grid pattern all night in seas that were becoming very uncomfortable, and that made the crew - myself included - grumble even more. At 0330 the following morning, myself and the other Boatswain’s Mate, Glen, relieved the bridge watch. The searchlights were pointed out, in front of the cutter as we executed our second grid pattern. At about 0410, we sailed not 10 feet past a large object down the starboard side that caught both of our eyes. As Glen ran to the bridge wing to train the light on the object we passed, I grabbed the throttles and began to swing the cutter around for a better look. I neglected to turn off the auto-helm, which controlled the rudders. Glen started screaming that there were people in the water!
The seas were running 4-6 feet, and I labored to get the cutter turned around as quickly as possible, while simultaneously reaching for the 1MC to alert the crew. Glen had the light trained on the object in the water, and absolutely could not, would not leave that position for fear of easily losing the contact. Having reached the 1MC microphone, I made what would be the loudest announcement I’ve ever made: “NOW ALL HANDS ON DECK!, ALL HANDS ON DECK! - POSSIBLE PEOPLE IN THE WATER! NOW - CAPTAIN TO THE BRIDGE!!!” The Captain, a notoriously deep sleeper, never heard the pipe. The crew responded from their dead sleeps in about 10 seconds, and the XO arrived on the bridge just as I had completed the turn, and was lining up on what turned out to be four men clinging desperately to a large life buoy. As I made my approach, the rudders were still trying to steer a course we’d departed from long ago. As we inched closer to the men, cargo nets hanging from the bow, steering with the twin engines, I made what had to smoothest live person shipboard pick up approach anyone had ever seen. The bow swung into perfect position - and the nets were touching the life buoy. This was undoubtedly due to that wayward auto-helm and the confused rudders, which I later noticed. Oh well, my secret was safe with me. Our crew plucked 3 of the 4 men out using the cargo nets, but the fourth required some help. One of our guys jumped in the water to push the last guy onto the net, and all were accounted for.
Anyway, it turns out that these four sailors were the crew of a small island freighter that lost its rudder. Literally - it fell out. So the boat filled with water and sank like a stone. They had just enough time to grab the EPIRB. They bobbed helplessly in the ocean all day and all night watching the distant lights of helicopters and ships who didn’t even know if there was a real emergency. In our endless back and forth search pattern, we damn near killed them by almost sailing straight into them. As I said earlier, we missed them by about 10 feet in an endless ocean. As anyone who has sailed can tell you, we found the needle in the haystack.
It’s not the most dramatic rescue. It didn’t make any newspapers or anything but for some reason I’ll never forget that night. I’ll never forget just how lucky we get sometimes. And I never complained again about false alarms.