'Mayday! Mayday!' The real-life drama of the Bay rescue

The six men weren't going far. Just out between the islands of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, where they'd caught three stripers the day before.

They'd towed their boat all the way from Arizona for five years now, old friends who worked together at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A few times, they'd skipped a day for rough seas. Even that morning, they'd waited for the wind to slacken.

But 10 minutes out of the marina, they already were in trouble. The January wind tore in from the northwest, whipping up seas that pounded their 18-foot outboard.

"We're taking on too much water!" someone shouted.

Ron Seay looked down. He stood shin deep in water. Seconds later, he heard the motor die.

"Get the radio!"

Seay found it in a side pouch up front. He had to reach under water to grab it.

The boat turned, and a wave crashed over the stern. A man hurried to pass out life jackets.

"Mayday! Mayday!"

Another wave hit. Then a third.

Seay wiggled into his life jacket but couldn't latch the plastic snap. He held it together with his left hand.

The boat flipped.

Still clasping his vest shut, Seay saw a seat cushion floating nearby and swam for it. His friends grabbed the stern of the capsized boat and called for him to come back. He knew he couldn't make it.

The boaters had plunged into 43-degree water. Seay felt like his heart might explode.

"I'll die of a heart attack before I drown," he thought.

As he floated, he sized up his fate. He had seen the pilot boats many times and knew they didn't come that way. He saw two container ships but knew they couldn't see him. He hadn't noticed other boats leaving the marina, either.

He didn't know that a Coast Guard helicopter patrolled nearby, or that a Maryland pilot launch was returning to the marina, or that a cold-water survival expert had just bought his morning coffee less than two miles away.

He thought he was done.

The fishermen had only a 5-watt handheld radio, but the Coast Guard was listening and picked up the mayday. It was 9:09 a.m.

"This is U.S. Coast Guard Sector Hampton Roads. State the nature of your distress."

No response.

"Say your position and the nature of your distress."

Nothing.

Six men on a Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter had just wrapped up a patrol, looking for illegal striped-bass fishing beyond three miles, and were flying to their base in Elizabeth City, N.C. They were well south of Rudee Inlet when they caught the voice trying to reach the fishermen's boat.

Co-pilot Danny Llanes heard someone from the back of the helicopter. It was rescue swimmer Drew Dazzo.

"Hey, sir, do you think they need our help?"

The mayday had mentioned the Lynnhaven basin but nothing else. And the gray bottom of the small capsized boat would blend in like a chameleon with the water.

The Coast Guard quickly tapped into its Rescue 21 system - a 9-1-1-like search-and-rescue communications program for the seas - to focus the hunt. The cross hatch of the radio signal put the men between the first and second islands of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

In the helicopter, the crew knew there was little time. If people were in the water, they'd likely be unconscious from hypothermia within 30 minutes.

The pilot got the position of the signal and turned the chopper to the north. As Llanes explained, they "pulled the guts out" and covered 30 miles in 12 minutes.

Llanes, the co-pilot, sat in the left front seat, the best vantage point. The crew programmed a search pattern and began flying it from about 200 feet.

Llanes looked across the water and saw nothing. He had been an instructor pilot in the Army for nearly 10 years and a few months ago had gone through a transition course to join the Coast Guard. He remembered asking the instructor how he'd ever spot something in the vastness of the sea.

"Just look for something different."

He scanned the bay and saw waves swirling up like frosting on a cake, and it was all gray. All the same.

The helicopter finished its first leg and swung around. Then Llanes called out.

"Hey, I think we got something in the water at my 11 o'clock."

The pilot gave the controls to Llanes so he could keep his eyes on the spot and guide them there.

Dazzo, the swimmer, gestured to a flight mechanic for his gear.

The pilot locked onto the scene, then took back the controls as Llanes fixed again on what he saw below: Two people floating in open water, about 50 feet from a capsized boat with three more clutching its stern. Yet another man drifting alone beyond that.

"Hey guys, we have six PIWs and a capsized boat," Llanes hollered.

"You serious, sir?" Dazzo yelled.

Dazzo had pulled people out of the water before, but the number - six - got his attention. He squirmed into his survival suit, put on his Neoprene gloves, hood, mask, snorkel and fins. Then he moved to the door as the helicopter flew just far enough from the boat so the rotor wash wouldn't blast anyone in the water.

The pilot brought it to 15 feet above the bay.

"This is going to be a free-fall deployment of rescue swimmer at 10 feet!" a crew member called out.

"Swimmer's checked and ready."

Dazzo jumped.

He kept his head up and eyes on the back of the boat as he resurfaced. He'd need to swim 60 feet in 4-foot seas and strong winds, but what surprised him most was the cold water.

The mask and snorkel had left about half an inch of exposed skin in an oval around his face. When his skin hit the water, he got an instant brain freeze.

Tim Barco had caught the mayday a few minutes earlier, too. He's a tower operator for the Association of Maryland Pilots, at a post on the Cape Henry beach.

He's heard a lot of maydays - some with boaters in less than dire straits. Barco could tell this wasn't one of those. He radioed launch captains Reed Sutherland and Matt Bailey, who had just dropped off pilots at two container ships.

"It sounded real, and it sounded close," Barco told them. "Keep your eyes open on the way in."

Barco knew the weather reports had the wind at 10-15 knots, but out on the beach, gusts were as high as 30. He sent Sutherland and Bailey to the spot where the Coast Guard had been dispatched, near the first and second bridge-tunnel islands. They cruised for 10 minutes but saw nothing.

At their post, Barco and the Virginia Pilot Association tower operator have a wall of radios and monitor five channels. Barco heard the helicopter contact a 25-foot Coast Guard boat that had motored out of Little Creek to join the rescue.

"Find the helo!" Barco told Sutherland and Bailey on the launch. Then he radioed the crew of a second pilot launch, at the dock at Lynnhaven Inlet.

"Get out here quick!"

The launch captains train every week for man-overboard situations. Every day, they pull their vessels alongside container ships or coal colliers and, while both are moving at 8 to 10 knots, pass a pilot to the ship. Every launch captain must be able to put on a cold-water survival suit in less than a minute.

Sutherland and Bailey saw the helicopter close in on them. They watched it circle, then move away and angle down near the water. It hovered over a spot.

"They found something," one said.

"This is it, this is for real."

The boat coasted slowly into the area to avoid running over anyone. Sutherland and Bailey opened the launch's doors to more easily look across the water. The pounding of the helicopter snuffed out their words, and the spray from the rotor blades doused them and their 52-foot launch.

Something caught Sutherland's eye to port, a man, floating in a seated position, with a life jacket on.

He gestured to Bailey and pointed.

"OK," Bailey yelled, "I see him."

Billy Burket had just bought his daily Starbucks and was headed across the Lesner Bridge, a couple miles from the drama unfolding in the bay. A captain in the Virginia Beach Fire Department's marine unit, Burket may know more about cold-water survival than anyone around. He directs the Maritime Incident Response Team for the Virginia ports and was bound for Ocean City, Md., to train tugboat crews.

As Burket crested the Lesner, he noticed the hovering Coast Guard helicopter and a Maryland pilot boat below it. He reached for his cell phone, but it rang before he could dial.

It was Barco from the pilot tower:

"Billy, we got six people in the water."

Burket called the Coast Guard and offered his help. Then he phoned the fire department to request ambulances.

He rang Barco.

"Is there a launch for me to get on?"

"Yes."

Burket made a U-turn.

Dazzo, the Coast Guard rescue swimmer, was cutting through the waves, his eyes locked on the back of the boat. It looked like the three men hanging on were alive.

"Which one of you guys wants to go home first?"

Because of the helicopter and his ear plugs, Dazzo couldn't hear, but he saw one man move his lips. Another's eyes had rolled back in his head.

"OK," he said to the unconscious man, "you're coming with me first."

Gathering the man's jacket collars in his fist, Dazzo towed him 60 feet through waves and rotor wash and pushed his 300-pound frame into a basket dangling from the helicopter. After a thumbs-up to hoist, Dazzo swam back to the boat.

As the one man kept talking, Dazzo looked at the other. His eyes had rolled back, and the rescue swimmer grabbed him. The man's hands remained locked to the back of the boat. Dazzo couldn't make the unconscious man let go.

He wrapped both arms around the man, put his foot on the side of the boat for leverage, and pried him loose.

They headed through the chop toward the helicopter. Hypothermia already had wracked the man so badly that his body curled into a fetal position. Dazzo wrestled him into the basket.

Returning to the boat a third time, he caught a glimpse of a pilot launch, then the shriek of a siren. He looked up and saw the Coast Guard boat.

"Where the heck did they come from?" he thought. "This is great."

He knew the helicopter's cabin was full. It was carrying two extra crewmen for training, and now it contained two freezing fishermen. Back at the overturned boat, the third guy was cold but relatively OK.

He'd get him on the Coast Guard boat.

Dazzo waved off the helicopter and let it head to a hospital.

Billy Burket stood on the deck of a Virginia pilot boat and saw what looked like a movie scene: a Coast Guard helicopter, basket down, low over the water; a Coast Guard boat; a Virginia Beach police boat and two Maryland pilot boats. Life jackets, a cooler and duffel bags littered the water.

On one of the Maryland pilot boats, Bailey steered as Sutherland reached into the water with a pole, trying to get a loop over a man. Cold waves rocked the launch. Sutherland couldn't get the loop under the man's arms. Bailey came to help, and they both stood in a well at the back of the boat and dragged the man in.

Inside the wheelhouse, they removed as many of his wet clothes as they could, wrapped him in blankets and blasted the heaters. Rescuers now had four men out of the water.

Sutherland glanced out the door.

"Two more off the starboard side here!" he called.

Sutherland and Bailey eased the launch over and hauled in a man floating with his head down. A Virginia Beach police boat got the last man out.

In the wheelhouse of the Maryland pilot launch, they started CPR on one man. When they asked the second man his name, he couldn't speak clearly. They needed a key piece of information:

How many in your boat?

"Six," he said. Then he passed out.

The Coast Guard boat pulled alongside, and Dazzo shouted: "Hey, do you need help with CPR?"

"We'll take all the help we can get," Sutherland called back.

Dazzo hopped on and did CPR on the unconscious man.

Burket jumped from the Virginia pilot launch to the Maryland boat. He saw that the man who was conscious was not alert, mumbling something over and over. More importantly, he noticed that the man had stopped shivering, a critical sign of distress with hypothermia.

"Hey, Reed," he told Sutherland. "Let's head in."

The Maryland pilots also noticed one more thing. The man wore a life jacket, but it wasn't snapped shut. He held his left arm tight to his chest, and his fist held the jacket together.

At the hospital, Ron Seay's body temperature measured 88.2 degrees. That meant his organs had begun to shut down.

Four days later, Seay had recovered and was released. The next day, he, his wife and daughter went over to a little building on Shore Drive and knocked on the door of the Maryland pilots association.

When no one recognized him, he introduced himself.

"I wouldn't be here without you," he said.

Then he recounted the rescue as he toured the boat that pulled him in. He told them he had passed out in the water, woke up on the boat with Sutherland, "the best looking guy I'd ever seen standing over me."

They gave Seay's family Association of Maryland Pilots sweatshirts, T-shirts, hats, a coffee mug.

"I should have been the one giving them the gifts," Seay said.

He couldn't thank Sutherland enough.

"I probably hugged him six or seven times," he said. "I told him, 'I just can't stop hugging you.' "

The fishermen weren't newbies to the Chesapeake Bay. The Arizonans had been out dozens of times, even skipped several days when the weather was rough and instead drove over to Sting-Rays on the Eastern Shore for lunch.

A police investigation found nothing illegal with their boat: They had a life jacket for each person and two throwable floats.

"Should they have gone out there in that type of sea? We know what the answer is," said Burket, of the Beach fire department. "But... we've all done things that pushed the envelope and we don't expect anything to happen. Well, guess what? It happened."

Two men died that morning, the boat owner, Allen Dedrick, 69, and Ned Rokey, 89. Four were saved: Ric Rokey, 64; Donald Brummett, 69; Robert Gerard, 62; and Seay, 66.

Since the rescue, Llanes, the Coast Guard helicopter co-pilot, has pondered what would have happened if the helo crew had not overheard the radio chatter. If the men had spent five more minutes in the water.

"I've never seen anything like that, all the people coming together in such a short period. It was the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life."

The Coast Guard helicopter dropped Dazzo in the Bay at 9:29.

Thirteen minutes later, all six fishermen were out of the water.

Lon Wagner, (757) 222-5119, lon.wagner@pilotonline.com