Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
By CURTIS KRUEGER, Times Staff WriterFrom Clearwater, they flew to within 10 miles of the storm's eye to save three people aboard a fishing boat.
The fishing boat Mary Lynn was taking on water 25 miles west of the Dry Tortugas, and Hurricane Katrina was closing in.
The crew sounded an emergency beacon. Two men and one woman on board hoped that somehow, someone could rescue them, in spite of the fierce spiraling storm that was just starting to churn into the Gulf of Mexico.
What followed was a harrowing 12-hour ordeal on the sea Friday night and Saturday morning as a U.S. Coast Guard crew flew within 10 miles of Katrina's eye to conduct a daring rescue attempt.
"I have never been in anything even close to that," said Coast Guard Lt. Craig Massello, commander of the HH-60-J Jayhawk helicopter, based at Air Station Clearwater.
The mission was among several for local Coast Guard crews this weekend as Katrina crossed over the gulf on the way to Louisiana, leaving other boats in peril. Clearwater crews also rescued a family of five from Cape Coral on Friday near Everglades City, and rescued a fisherman from Key West on Saturday.
All this made it "one of the more intense weekends that we've had," said Petty Officer Danielle DeMarino.
Coast Guard officials said the Mary Lynn 's emergency radio beacon sounded off at about 8 p.m. Friday. Three crew members - Anita Miller of Clearwater and Chris White and Mark Gutek of Madeira Beach - were on board.
Katrina was bearing down on them and the Florida Keys, which are 70 miles east of the Dry Tortugas.
For Massello and his crew of three, it was clearly a dangerous mission. But they weighed that against the three people who might lose their lives at sea.
"The risk versus gain was worth it," Massello said.
About 9 p.m. Friday, the rescue helicopter took off from Clearwater toward Marathon, on a route that would steer them farther east of Katrina to keep them out of the worst of the weather. On the way, they encountered another fishing boat, with water flooding the engine room.
They hovered overhead for 45 minutes, but ultimately decided that boat was in less critical shape than the Mary Lynn .
At that point, Massello and his crew learned the Mary Lynn crew had tried to get into a lifeboat, but it had capsized. So they took a direct route to the boat, flying straight into the hurricane.
"We started watching the winds go to as much as 85 knots," or 95 mph, Massello said.
The fierce winds were blowing the helicopter off course and using up far more fuel than any normal flight. By the time the crew reached the Mary Lynn , it was roughly 1:30 a.m., completely dark, and Katrina was raging.
Using night vision goggles, they could barely see "a glow in the mist," said Lt. j.g. David Sheppard, the co-pilot, who grew up in Pinellas County.
"It was at that point that we realized that we were running low on fuel," Massello said.
So he made the tough decision to leave to get more fuel at the naval air station in Key West. They returned at about 5:30 a.m., when it was still dark. But the intense winds kept blowing them away from the boat, so Massello decided to hover nearby until daylight.
Around 7:30, they moved back into position. Looking below, Massello could see waves rising about 45 feet high - a height he could judge by looking at the length of the Mary Lynn , which was 41 feet.
Petty Officer Kenyon Bolton, a rescue swimmer, was lowered into the sea by a hoist, with assistance from Petty Officer Rob Cain, the flight mechanic. One by one, Mary Lynn's crew members got into a flotation ring with a rope attached to the fishing boat, and swam out toward Bolton. He strapped them in, and Cain raised them using the hoist.
"They were all exhausted," Bolton said. "They'd been through a long night of giant waves and stress. They were all very eager to get off that boat."
When Bolton and the last crew member were hoisted up, "I cannot tell you the sense of relief," Massello said.
The three survivors of the Mary Lynn could not be reached for comment Monday, but all were safe.
Massello said it was the worst weather he has ever seen, "let alone be in the middle of."
"It definitely took every bit of our training and confidence in each other and then some," he said.
Bolton had flown through a band of Hurricane Frances, but "it was nothing compared to Katrina."
Sheppard agreed. "This was the most difficult rescue I'd ever been on," he said.
--Times staff writer Curtis Krueger can be reached at krueger@sptimes.com or 727 893-8232.