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You are here: MacNN Forums > Community > MacNN Lounge > Two teens lost at sea miraculously found alive !!

Two teens lost at sea miraculously found alive !!
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Krusty
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May 1, 2005, 05:52 PM
 
Just thought I'd post this VERY amazing story. The kids launched last week just a few miles from where I live. They were found alive yesterday having drifted 111 miles from their point of origin. The Coast Guard had given them up for dead last Tuesday.

SOUTHPORT, N.C. --When the sun rose over the Atlantic Saturday morning, Josh Long and Troy Driscoll were clinging to their 14-foot Sunfish sailboat, praying for the Lord to take them peacefully.
They had been lost at sea for a week, fleeing sharks, nearly being hit by containerships and struggling to keep their boat upright. They had spent more than six days trying to flag down passing fishing boats, eating jellyfish and singing hymns while their bodies slowly burned and dehydrated under the harsh Carolina sun.

They tormented each other with fantasies of banana splits and strawberry milkshakes, dreamed of passing Mountain Dew trucks. But they couldn't take it any longer.

"I asked God to take me," Driscoll said Saturday night as he lay in the emergency room of Dosher Memorial Hospital here. "You're out there fighting for your life. We didn't want to fight anymore."

Against all odds, Long, 18, and Driscoll, 15, survived. They outlasted many of their searchers, inspired prayers and survived a six-day ordeal that's being hailed as nothing short of a miracle.

Fishermen aboard a North Carolina fishing vessel named Renegade spotted the teens' sailboat about 4:30 p.m. Saturday, roughly seven miles off the coast of Cape Fear, N.C. The fishermen snagged the boat and hoisted the teens aboard.

Their families and a relentless corps of rescuers and volunteers had never lost hope. "This is unreal," Long's older brother Jonathan Goerling said as he drove toward North Carolina late Saturday to reunite with his brother.

Shane Coker, Driscoll's older brother, said he would first hug his sibling. "Then I'm gonna hit him and let him know how much he made us worry."

"It's a miracle," said Mike Willis, a spokesman with the Department of Natural Resources.

The rescue capped off a tense and emotional week across the Lowcountry that began shortly after the best friends failed to return from a fishing trip from Station 9 on Sullivan's Island on April 24.

They were last seen that afternoon. It was a blustery day and the National Weather Service had warned small boats to keep off waterways.

Within minutes, the boys knew something was wrong, the tug of the current was too strong. They jumped into the water and tried to swim for shore, pulling the boat along with them. They could see the Breach Inlet bridge between Sullivan's and the Isle of Palms. They yelled at people they saw walking along the beach, but no one heard them.

Before anyone even knew they were missing, they had been pulled out to sea by the current. Within hours, they could no longer see land.

"We lost our tackle the second day," Driscoll told one of his relatives on the phone. "So we couldn't catch any fish."

The boys wound up 111 miles away from where they launched. The fishermen on the "Renegade" radioed the Coast Guard, which scrambled a 26-foot vessel from the Oak Island Coast Guard Station in North Carolina.

The boys were moved to the Coast Guard vessel. They received medical attention on shore and were then taken to the hospital.

They had no fresh water, no food and, without their fishing gear, no way to catch any. Against their better judgment, they drank saltwater. They couldn't help it, the days were unbearable.

They would slip into the water to cool off, but sharks chased them back aboard the boat.

At night, it was freezing. The shared a wetsuit to stay warm.

Sunburned, dehydrated, exhausted and bruised, the teens were in relatively good shape considering the odyssey, Coast Guard officials said.

"We were praying for a miracle and we got one," Charleston Coast Guard Cmdr. June Ryan said. "Everybody on the East Coast has been looking for these boys."
     
ManOfSteal
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May 1, 2005, 07:46 PM
 
Wow, that is truly amazing to say the least.
     
olePigeon
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May 1, 2005, 08:39 PM
 
Dear God, please let me win the lotto. Better odds than those two AND I'll donate to your church.
"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
     
wdlove
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May 2, 2005, 01:56 PM
 
Heard the story on my local news also. Truly an amazing story of faith and ingenuity.

"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." Winston Churchill
     
BlueSky
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May 2, 2005, 02:04 PM
 
I strongly suspect it was a "cold feet" hoax borne by fears of a math test.
     
scaught
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May 3, 2005, 09:05 AM
 
dude. you can eat jellyfish?
     
   
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