Sea Rescue Seen On Tape
A weekend rescue at sea was caught in a
off the coast of Cape Lookout, N.C.Robert Cummings and friend Jerry McCarthy were taking the 41-foot sailboat "At Ease" from Virginia to an eventual place in a race off Bermuda, when trouble hit.
Forty-foot waves kicked up by a nor'easter battered the boat. Cummings, who owned the boat, tells The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm, "The winds were blowing over 60 knots, and the boat took a knockdown (and a window was blown out). We actually were ejected from the cockpit, along with the life raft that we lost. And it was pretty rough out there.
"We spent the night bailing the water and keeping things at bay, keeping the boat afloat. We thought we were going to make it through it without too much damage. But the next morning, we took another hard knockdown, and we lost the main hatch. We knew the boat was untenable and it was time to get off."
Cummings and McCarthy were thrown overboard at least twice, but tethered themselves to the boat. Cummings showed Storm the tether, and said the move proved pivotal: "Without this, wearing this item, I would not be here today. So, between this and the life jacket and my location device, these items kept me alive long enough for the Coast Guard to come pick me up."
The location device, called an EPRIB, was a huge help, says the pilot of the rescue helicopter, Lt. Junior Grade Andy Barrow. He told Storm Cummings and McCarthy also "did a great job of keeping their radios working. We were able to talk to them as we got closer to them. They gave us their exact position. We really had no trouble finding them."
By the time the chopper got to the scene, says Barrow, "The weather was good. It was a lot better than it was the night before, which made it a little bit easier for us. The seas were still pretty big, probably 20, 25 feet, maybe. The weather was no problem at all. We were able to talk to these guys on the radio. We came up with a plan on how to get them off the boat and put our rescue swimmer into the water and he swam over to the boat. They jumped into the water one at a time and the swimmer helped them get into the basket and we hoisted them up to the helicopter. It went very smoothly."
Cummings, who flies Blackhawk choppers for the U.S. Army, says he and McCarthy intend to be back at sea soon.