An overnight jaunt on the chilly waters of Sarasota Bay turned into a terrifying struggle for survival.
By KELLY VIRELLA
Published September 30, 2003
Patrick McCauley and three friends were cruising west on Sarasota Bay to Longboat Key around 2 a.m. Monday, when someone moved inside the lightweight johnboat and it flipped, dunking everyone.
The 14-foot boat and the one life jacket inside it sank. An unlaced sneaker, an oar, a gas can and a beer cooler rose to the surface.
The boaters splashed around in the 84-degree water for a few minutes, then wrapped their arms around a nearby buoy.
McCauley, a 35-year-old Sarasota construction worker, swam off into the night to get help, with the cooler tucked under his arm for buoyancy.
Six hours later and 21/2 miles south, McCauley reached the shore of Longboat Key near Lighthouse Point, cooler in tow, and called 911.
Longboat Key police and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission rescued John Wade, 25 and Alicia Eady, 18, - both of Sarasota - and David Wilson, 35, of Bradenton three hours later.
The sharp edges of old shells covering the buoy had cut their hands, arms and legs.
Their skin was pruned and they were so cold that their feet and arms had turned white. But they were without serious injuries.
"It was just one of those things that happens," McCauley said. "I'm just glad we made it."
The four friends got into McCauley's roommates' motorized boat Sunday night, around 11 p.m. McCauley, the operator, had never taken the boat across the bay to Longboat Key, but he had a lot of experience crewing on fishing and cargo boats in the Bering Sea and at a port in Washington.
"We were just cruising, giggling," McCauley said. "It doesn't cost anything to float around a boat at two o'clock in the morning."
They docked at Indian Beach and walked to a convenience store for a pack of cigarettes.
Thirty minutes after landing they got back in the boat and headed west to Longboat Key. They were talking, smoking and drinking the six-pack of Busch beer inside the cooler.
The lightweight boat capsized so quickly that McCauley said he didn't see what happened, but he believes that it turned over because someone moved, altering the balance.
"Somebody in the middle leaned over or shifted," he said. "I don't know, maybe they were reaching for their cigarettes or reaching over to touch the water."
The nearby buoy was close enough to Longboat Key that they could see the shore.
They clung to the buoy for a few minutes before McCauley decided to swim for help.
He tucked the cooler under his arm for a while. Then he held it in his hand, sometimes floating on his back. .
It was so dark, cold and scary in the water, that McCauley turned around twice before finally staying the course.
He began to hallucinate that the shore was closer than it was. "I was mostly afraid of the sharks," he said. "I was out there in the dark, I couldn't see or hear anyone. It was spooky."
The tide was strong and McCauley decided to swim south with it.A little after daybreak, he approached a sandbar and a group of five houses near Lighthouse Point.
A resident let McCauley call 911.
"It was quite remarkable that we were able to find the people alive," said Longboat Key police Chief Al Hogle. "It was as close to a miracle as you can get."
The boaters were treated at Sarasota Memorial Hospital and released Monday afternoon.
McCauley went to a friend's house and collapsed in bed, exhausted from the ordeal.
He set the lucky cooler on the porch. "I probably wouldn't be alive without it," he said.
