During 28 hours in sea peril on an improvised raft made of iceboxes, the three men were attacked by sharks, cooled and burned by jellyfish. Eventually, a “miraculous” text came to the rescue.
Less than 30 minutes ago
– I just remember that he picked me up from the water. I thought, ‘wow, I survived’, “Luan Nguyen said in tears in an interview with NBC Wednesday of this week.
It had been a few days since the drama in the Gulf of Mexico outside New Orleans last weekend. A crazy drama was far from certain but him, Phong Le and Son Nguyen.
On Saturday 8 October the three friends went out fishing. As they had done many times before. But this time they found themselves in trouble right away. The high seas caused the boat to start getting water astern. They quickly realized they were in trouble.
The men managed to moor the front of the boat to an oil rig, but the waves, which only got worse, smashed the boat against the platform. The 24-foot boat was about to be crushed. Within two minutes they were able – with the help of a bandana on her head – to tie two ice-filled boxes together into a provocative raft.
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They tried to stay close to the oil rig so they could get help. It didn’t work out that way.
It was 10 o’clock, the boat had sunk and the men were clinging to two iceboxes in the sea.
The next day or so was going to be long.
Called
When darkness fell they were consoled that at least they received light from the full moon.
But the joy was short-lived.
A shark has appeared. He attacked Luan Nguyen. A struggle for life and death ensued.
– The shark hit the life jacket. I kept pushing him away, but he didn’t go away. Then I hit him in the eye. I managed to press my thumbs into the shark’s eyes. Then he disappeared. I have small scars, but you know, he says in the interview.
But sharks weren’t the only problem for Luan Nguyen and his friends.
– Every fifteen or 20 minutes we were burned by a jellyfish, says Le, who says that at one point he dozed off and woke up suddenly with a huge jellyfish in his lap.
In the end, it was also cold. Even though the temperature in the water was relatively high, it is not good for you to lie down and soak in water below your body temperature for one hour after another.
– It was terribly cold. We tried to hold on and keep warm, explains Le.
Suddenly he got cover
In the morning they spotted a shrimp trawler a few miles away. He decided to try swimming to the boat for help. Uselessly. Long before she reached him, the trawler disappeared without seeing them.
It was then that he took out her cell phone, which she had in a waterproof case. The phone was in airplane mode, to save energy. In any case, she had had no cover after they left port the day before. She now she wanted to use the GPS to find out her approximate location.
– I opened it and suddenly I got the cover. A lot of text messages have arrived. The whole time I had been without cover, but now, in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, I suddenly had cover.
The ones he didn’t have much of, however, were batteries. Only five percent. She had to act fast. While he still had some battery and not least coverage. She quickly took a screenshot of a map in which the GPS showed his location. She sent the same with a text message explaining the emergency situation they were in to a friend.
Soon after, the phone died.
– Completely exhausted
Fortunately, the message got to the friend. He immediately contacted the Coast Guard.
But unbeknownst to the friend or the three floating in the sea, the Coast Guard had already sent a helicopter to look for them. Just five minutes into their flight, they relayed the miraculous message and were thus able to narrow their search considerably.
25 minutes later they were in the area from which the message was sent. 15-20 minutes later, a search plane, also dispatched, spotted one of the three men waving in the water.
It was Le, who was now in a different place from her friends.
A rescuer jumped overboard from the helicopter and made sure you could be hoisted. Eventually he was saved.
– He didn’t say much. He was completely exhausted, says Katy Caraway, who was the copilot of the helicopter CNN.
Around the same time, they learned that the other two had also been spotted – some distance away – by one of the coast guard boats. But the drama wasn’t over for them yet.
Other problems with sharks
When the boat made it up to the raft of the icebox, it wasn’t just the two men they saw out to sea.
– They were bothered by the sharks when we arrived, says rescuer Andrew Stone.
Nguyen got a bite in the hands from the meter-long black tip sharks that surrounded them. Blood poured into the water. The life jacket was half ripped from the shark’s bite.
But that was when he was finally pulled out of the water. The same with the friend. Trapped, sunburned, refrigerated, dehydrated and hungry, but alive.
Although those who work in the US Coast Guard are trained for such missions, Caraway believes it was something completely out of the ordinary.
– People like that, who have been in the water for so long, away from their ship without any form of communication are almost impossible to find and save. This takes the cake out of the rescue, she says, and adds:
– The chances of finding them before that text message were slim or nil. After the text message, the chances were still very slim.
But then succeeding, he believes, is the best feeling you can have.
– I’m just happy that they have the opportunity to spend the rest of their lives with their families, she says.
