4 rescued after boat sinks in Gulf

Three men cling to a cooler and a boy floats in a life jacket before a charter captain plucks them aboard.

By DAN DeWITT

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 5, 2000

HERNANDO BEACH -- Jim Richardson and his three buddies -- whose fishing boat sank in the Gulf on Saturday afternoon -- figure they owe their lives to their mobile phone, their buoyant Igloo cooler, and especially to Daniel Ebbecke, a charter boat captain from Hernando Beach.

"We're all very grateful that he saved our lives," said Richardson, 36, said about Ebbecke, who pulled them from the water.

Richardson and Donny James, 35, both of Lake County, and Sumter County resident Mike Stokes, 41, clung to the cooler in 68-degree water for nearly an hour. Stokes' son, Jeremy, 14, was kept afloat by the only life jacket the men were able to grab before the 25-foot boat quickly went down about 17 miles west of Hernando Beach.

Ebbecke rescued the fisherman after the phone call was relayed to him from a Hernando Beach bait shop.

"It's nice to feel like Superman for a day," said Ebbecke, "to help out somebody that really needs it."

Richardson, cousin of former Hernando County Commissioner John Richardson, set out for a fishing trip on his boat with the three others about 8:30 a.m. About 2:30 p.m., they noticed the craft was taking on water. Though it was windy, and the waves were about 4 feet high, the boat wasn't swamped; Richardson still doesn't know why his boat sank.

With the water shorting out his battery and putting his marine radio out of commission, he used his telephone to call Hernando Beach Bait & Tackle. Nancy Forshier, the store's owner, took the call and relayed it to the Coast Guard and to Ebbecke's boat, the Thunder.

Ebbecke, who was carrying eight charter passengers, took the coordinates, and realized he was 11 miles east of the foundering vessel.

"I went for them as fast as I could without throwing a piston," Ebbecke said.

Forshier said Richardson was surprisingly calm on the phone. That, Richardson said, was because he didn't realize how near they were to sinking until they opened the engine compartment and found it nearly full of water.

"We commenced to bailing as fast as we could," Mike Stokes said. "And it didn't help."

The boat went down only minutes later.

They began drifting away from the spot where their boat sank.

When Ebbecke arrived about 40 minutes after taking the call, a fisherman on another boat from Tarpon Springs, had accidentally hooked the anchor line of Richardson's boat.

"When they found out that they'd caught a boat, that's when I knew we were looking for people . . . heads in the water," Ebbecke said.

They backtracked, following the wind. Ebbecke's mate, Jim Petty, was the first to see them. Ebbecke's boat picked up the three men. The second boat rescued Jeremy, who had drifted a short distance from the men and the cooler.

A Coast Guard boat and helicopter arrived a short time later, Ebbecke said.

"They probably would have found them if we didn't," he said. "But three people can look pretty small in the Gulf, even from a helicopter."

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