Rescued from the sea
Five anglers plucked from Gulf by fellow fisherman after high waves
swamp boat

What started as a day of spearfishing in the Gulf of Mexico nearly
turned tragic for a Homosassa boater and his friends.

Boat owner Quinten Brown, crewmember Everett Nichols, of Homosassa, and
three others survived when their 28-foot power-motored catamaran
overturned on Friday, 75 miles out in the Gulf, due west of Citrus County.

While bracing the 6- to 10-foot and-climbing waves, Brown’s catamaran
took on water faster than the two bilge pumps could evacuate, prompting
the crew to send out mayday signals to the Coast Guard and other ships.

“We were really scared,” Nichols said. “We were thinking 9-1-1 the whole
time.” According to the 2011 Recreational Boating Statistics released by
the U.S. Coast Guard, there were 4,588 accidents, 758 deaths and 3,081
injuries as a result of boating incidents caused by weather and water
conditions in the nation.

Even hitting the satellite spot device they had onboard, Brown and his
crew were still unsure that the signal reached the Coast Guard, but
their VHF radio had a static response to their stranded calls.

Nearby, Joe Brown and his crewmates were returning home in their 28-foot
*Parker* fishing boat from a two-day fishing trip 120 miles offshore
when they received the mayday call.

Brown heard the SOS and attempted to relay both his and the sinking
vessel’s coordinates to the Coast Guard.

“It was difficult for the Coast Guard to understand them, their
transmission was partly broken,” Brown said.

In preparation for the possibility of a sinking ship, Nichols told
Quinten Brown, no relation to Joe Brown, to get his dive gear on, and
told the rest of the crew to put on life vests.

In addition to the flotation devices, Nichols and the crew grabbed
firearms to defend themselves against sharks, and a flare gun to signal
nearby boats. The sinking crew had no idea how long they were going to
be in the water.

“We didn’t know if they were going to find us today,” Nichols said about
Brown’s search efforts.

After their catamaran overturned, the crew positioned themselves in
between the two hulls, waiting with their salvaged equipment and a
portable radio. As boats a mile away came into view, Nichols attempted
to signal with flares, but no one responded.

Joe Brown kept getting transmissions from Nichols requesting that they
turn left and right in order to confirm that they were seeing the right
ship, but they never did.

“There was a lot of miscommunication,” Brown said. “They kept thinking
they saw us.”

Still trying to get in contact with Joe Brown’s boat, signals from
Nichols’ radio slowly directed the searching ship, but it wasn’t until
an hour and a half later that Nichols finally saw Brown’s boat.

“All of us started to wave our arms about and started shouting, praying
the whole time that they could see us,” Nichols said.

As the rescue boat approached the sinking hull, a dive platform was
lowered to the stranded men.

“I made sure that they had everyone on board,” Joe Brown said. “My main
concern was to make sure nobody drifted away when their boat overturned.”

Nichols, with scuba gear, dove underneath the catamaran to save any
possible possessions and managed to salvage wallets and personal effects.

Deciding that the catamaran would be a hassle to tow back to shore and
would eventually sink, the crew left the boat in the 80-foot deep water.

The Coast Guard in St. Petersburg sent a helicopter to the site,
reaching the overturned boat around 4:30 p.m., just as Joe Brown’s
rescue ship was leaving to go back to Cedar Key with the thankful crew.

Coast Guard rescue crafts from Yankeetown were called off after the
survivors were rescued.

It wasn’t until 1 a.m. Saturday that the boat made landfall at Cedar
Key, but spirits were still high even after the ordeal when Dewey Moore,
Joe Brown’s first mate, joked with Quinten Brown.

“I asked Quinten if he knew anybody who had a used boat trailer for
sale, and he laughed,” Moore said.

In the end, Everett Nichols will never forget what Joe Brown and his
crew did for them and will always view them as people who went out of
their own way and safety to rescue them.

“People like Joe are few and far in between, and his outreaching hand is
the strongest bond us fishermen have,” Nichols said. “He’s a hero and a
half.”

Nichols said they would wait for the seas to calm before setting out to
go fishing again.

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