Before the Coast Guard arrived, two larger waves of 20 feet nearly tipped over the old, wooden Escort, and Captain Vanderhoop briefed the crew on how to react to a capsizing.
Back in 1980, Vanderhoop had weathered Hurricane David off the coast of New Foundland. He told the crew, who donned life vests to prepare for a crisis, to stay together if tossed overboard and to try to avoid the possibility of receiving cuts which could attract sharks.
"If you get singled out, you are not going to make it, " Vanderhoop recalls telling them. "They didn't mind the fact that they had to go in the water, but the sharks really got to them," he says.
To make matters worse, it took the Coast Guard nearly an hour once they arrived to throw over a line to the Escort. And once the line was received at around 3 a.m., the long journey back to harbor still lay ahead.
After the crew finally made it back, they found that their rescuers in the Dorado had disappeared. Ogletree discovered later that they had called the Coast Guard to see if everyone had landed safely.
Finding Common Ground
"[Harris] likes us and wants to get back together," Vanderhorn says. "A lot of people wouldn't have done what he did. If he hadn't done that, we would have died. It was a Godsend."
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