A group of fisherman had big plans to participate in a fishing tournament. Instead, their boat sank and they spent four and a half hours trying to stay alive in the water and praying to be rescued before the coast guard finally found the group.
"We all cried," Easton Barrett tells Inside Edition. "We knew that we were going home to see our loved ones again."
The journey started as the group of five were competing in the Mary Walker Marina Snapper Showdown in Gautier, Mississippi.But in the middle of their excursion, their boat sank 30 miles off the coast of Dauphin Island, Alabama .
"Everything was going great until the second it wasn't going great. Within 45 seconds, the boat was gone," fisherman Stephen Maulding says. They still don’t know what happened or why the boat went under.
The group, all experienced offshore fisherman, went into survival mode.
They put on their life jackets once they were in the water and clung to their coolers to help them stay afloat. They wanted as much stuff floating around them to make them more visible to boaters and those searching for them from above.
"We just all hung onto each other, held onto the coolers and hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst," Barrett says.
While treading water, the men rationed food and water in case they wound up on an island. They split two bottles of water total. Barrett, who happened to have his phone on him, tried calling 911 a few times but the calls didn’t go through. He continued with everyone else in his phone, hoping a signal would pick up. When the connection didn’t work, he recorded a goodbye video just in case that he later shared on TikTok, which now has 7.4 million views.
@eastonrbarrett The day all our life changed! Thank you to the to the dolphin island uscg for saving our lifes! Thanks to @YETI for building an amazing ice chest and thanks to the EPIRB GPS IF YALL DONT HAVE ONE GET ONE IT WILL SAVE YIUR LIFE!
♬ My Heart Will Go On (Titanic) - Maliheh Saeedi & Faraz Taali
A personal locator beacon helped saved their life. The one they had in their life-saving kit that was in a floating waterproof yellow bag and made by the company ARC ARTEX .
"You register someone that's going to be on shore you know like your mom or your dad and you also register it to the Coast Guard. Once you press the button on this device, it is telling whoever the person you registered it to as well as the Coast Guard that you're in distress," Maulding says. One of the fishermen’s girlfriends had reminded her mother that she was the emergency contact. Two minutes later, the U.S. Coast Guard called.
Barrett says the Coast Guard’s boat passed them three times before finally spotting them on the fourth time. "They actually saw the cooler, and they didn't see us until they were like 100 yards from us then they saw us too. But they were coming to check out the cooler, which ultimately, that's what led them to see us, thankfully," Maulding says.
"I was tired at that point, but once I knew they spotted us and that boat was sitting there in front of us just hovering around, getting in position to get us out of the water, I could have stayed in the water 24 hours at that point. I didn't feel anything. I was in shock that we were getting out of the water. It was a weird feeling. I just immediately got untired. Once I got on the deck of the Coast Guard boat, I sat there and I processed, "Did that really just happen?” says Maulding.
Four and half hours later, they were rescued.
Barrett advises every boater or outdoor enthusiast to remember to “get an EPIRB or a personal locating device and get the proper life jackets, not just a life jacket that you could spend out on the lake or a river, an actual Coast Guard proof reflective life jacket.”
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