Viral X (Formerly Twitter) video exhibits Coast Guard pilot Lt. Ian Logan and his crews got down to search the waters off Longboat Key after Hurricane Milton struck the western Florida coast, however didn’t anticipate discovering anybody needing rescue. The storm had already swept by way of the realm, and Logan anticipated the mission to be routine. However, the crew quickly found a person clinging to life in an unbelievable state of affairs—floating 30 miles out within the Gulf of Mexico, holding onto a cooler.
“We thought it’d’ve been a buoy,” Logan advised ABC News. “I bear in mind trying down and seeing the strobe and like seeing him holding on to the cooler. So as soon as we pulled up in that 50-foot hover proper subsequent to the man, we’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, he is on like a cooler that is opened up and he is simply floating on it,’ which is insane.”
The man had got down to sea early Wednesday to work on repairs to his disabled boat, situated about 20 miles off John’s Pass, a barrier island close to St. Petersburg, in keeping with the Coast Guard. As he tried to return to shore, his boat turned disabled once more, leaving him stranded. He contacted the Coast Guard.
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However, as Hurricane Milton bore down on Florida’s coast, climate circumstances quickly worsened. The Coast Guard suggested the person to put on a life jacket and stick with the vessel’s emergency position-indicating radio beacon. The final contact that they had with him was at 6:45 p.m. ET that night.
Man discovered alive after days adrift, hair matted with salt
By the time Logan and his crew situated the person, his boat was nowhere to be seen, and he had resorted to utilizing the cooler as a flotation system. “I did not consider it at first. There are a variety of questions going by way of my head. So I paused for like, 10 seconds, as we’re making this flip, going to make our strategy to the water,” Logan defined.
“And I’m like, ‘Are you positive?’ And the swimmer is like, ‘Yes, he is waving his arms at us like, that is the man.’ And I bear in mind all of us are like, ‘My goodness, I can not consider we’re so excited that we discovered this man.’ Like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
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When the Coast Guard swimmer pulled the person up from the water, Logan described, “I look again over my shoulder and he is over my again proper shoulder and I see this man — hair seems just like the Castaway film, the place he is coated in salt.”
“He’s bought a life vest on, he is soaked. And at that time, it actually set in, like, ‘Oh my God, I can not consider we simply discovered this man.’”