‘It went down fast.’ Charter captain describes cold water capsize rescue in the Gulf
Going between spots, captain Brian Lambert is always keeping his eyes on the horizon for floating objects.
“You never know what might be under something out there,” said Lambert, who runs his charter fishing business Fishhawk Charters out of St. Petersburg.
“But this time it wasn’t something under. It was something on top.”
Last Saturday, his group of anglers was fishing for hogfish around 22 miles offshore when Lambert came back in a little bit shallower to try a new spot.
“It was rough, probably 3- to 4-foot seas. The water temperature was cold too, about 69 degrees,” described Lambert, who fishes in a 35-foot Contender. “A group of four guys was drift fishing near us in a small boat, probably 19- or 20-feet long. I was talking with my anglers about how small the boat was to be out on a day like that.”
As Lambert’s anglers continued fishing, the drifting boat headed further west, leaving the view of the charter. After an hour Lambert decided to move again, pointing southward in a similar direction to where the boat disappeared. He began to plane his boat when he noticed something odd while scanning the horizon.
Charter captain assists in Gulf rescue
“There was something big floating,” Lambert recalled. “I had binoculars, so I pulled them out and thought I might be seeing arms waving between the swells. I picked up to go see and we saw people standing on a capsized boat waving their arms at us.”
The fishing boat that was near Lambert had capsized, ending with its hull upside down and its four anglers clinging to it in the cold Gulf of Mexico. Lambert approached with caution as a language barrier hampered the emerging rescue mission.
“They spoke broken English. It was hard to communicate. I made sure that there were only four of them and not another guy missing. Three were on the boat and one was in the water. We got them dry jackets and tried to warm them up when they got onboard. It was obvious they weren’t doing well and needed immediate help.”
Lambert asked what happened. One of the men described looking into the bilge and saw it filling with water as the back of the boat slowly sank.
“The bilge pump. It burned out,” the distressed angler said in a short video during the rescue. Seeing the problem, they were able to get off a phone call to one of their wives, who then called the U.S. Coast Guard.
But before they could share any location information with the wife, the boat was capsized and lost communication.
“They said they were in the water for 30 to maybe 40 minutes and didn’t know how it went down so fast. Luckily, before sinking, they started driving at us but didn’t get far. They were shook up when we got them in the boat. One of the guys said if we weren’t coming, he was ready to let go.”
With the four survivors onboard Lambert contacted the Coast Guard and started to head east. The Coast Guard informed the families of their rescue, telling Lambert they received a call from the wife but she had no knowledge of where the boat was.
“We met up with a Sheriff boat about eight miles offshore and the men jumped on with them,” Lambert said. “It all happened so fast. We didn’t get any names, but a few of their nephews reached out and said that it was their uncles we saved and they were doing well. 10 minutes sooner or later than we left and it might have ended up being a much different story.”
With the 69-degree water temperature, hypothermia can take less than two hours to set in. Without Lambert’s immediate help, the four gentlemen would have soon been in a life-threatening situation.
