NAPLES, Fla. - Officials say a good Samaritan and the U.S. Coast Guard saved two boaters after their 25-foot boat capsized in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.
According to the Coast Guard, the men were rescued Thursday morning about 50 miles west of Naples.
Officials say the men had sent out a mayday call over the radio at 5:56 a.m., and a Coast Guard airplane eventually located them with an emergency beacon, clinging to the hull of their boat.
Another commercial boater pulled the men out of the water and eventually helped them get to the Coast Guard ship.
No injuries were reported.
“The MAYDAY and EPIRB were both critical to finding and rescuing these two boaters," said Lt. j.g. Diane French, watchstander at Sector St. Petersburg's command center. "The MAYDAY gave us the initial notification of distress, but not all radio transmissions—particularly those so far offshore—provide us with an exact fix or line of bearing. In this case, without either, the search area was very large. The subsequent EPIRB activation was the key to narrowing down the area and giving the aircraft a more precise location to search.”
