Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
A rope holding an anchor gives way, and a diver finds himself alone 14 miles off the coast.
By MONIQUE FIELDS
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 8, 2001
CLEARWATER -- It was an unbelievable scene.
Jason Sponagle surfaced in the Gulf of Mexico fresh from a dive to find that the boat that had brought him 14 miles off the shore of Clearwater was gone.
The rope that held the anchor gave way. The 22-foot Bayliner floated 5.5 miles from where he was diving at Veterans Reef.
"You can only imagine the emptiness and the loneliness as you're out there with no boat, and the only thing to guide you is the lights in the distance," said his father, Kenneth Sponagle, 53. "He swam until his legs gave out."
Jason Sponagle, 27, who spent as many as nine hours in the water, couldn't be reached for comment Friday. His father, for one, was glad to know he and his family could finally rest. He reported his son missing at 8:58 p.m. Thursday. The wait was painful. His father hoped he had engine trouble and was inching his way back home, but he knew the other possibilities.
"He could have died out there," he said.
Sponagle left the Seminole boat ramp in his 22-foot Bayliner early Thursday afternoon to go diving at Veterans Reef, 14 nautical miles northwest of Clearwater Pass.
The U.S Coast Guard found Sponagle's boat at 1:45 a.m. It wasn't until 4:09 a.m. that Ken Sponagle heard his son was okay.
"We found him," the caller said.
"Thank God," Ken Sponagle said.
The Clearwater resident made two mistakes. He went diving alone, and he threw his anchor over the side instead of the bow, said Petty Officer Paul Rhynard, a spokesman for the Coast Guard. When an anchor hangs over the side, the motion of the boat can sever the anchor's line.
Sponagle, a certified scuba diver, had a few things on his side.
His father knew his favorite diving site. Jason Sponagle had buoyancy compensator, which helped keep him afloat, and his boat was equipped with a Global Positioning System, which pointed rescuers to his original dive site.
Those factors helped save him, Rhynard said.
An HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter scanned the waters where he had dived while a 41-foot utility boat made 6-mile runs to the north and south. On the sixth run, Travis Park, the boat's operator, shut off the engine. "Hey!" he hollered.
From the darkness came a reply.
The crew sent up a flare that lit up the sky. There, bobbing on the surface, was Sponagle.
Travis and the three other crew members were elated.
"This was the first time in 61/2 years that we've been off shore with a diver missing and found the boat and found the person," Travis said.