‘The night was real tough’: 4 missing boaters found alive off Clearwater coast

After their boat started taking on water in the Gulf of Mexico around midday Monday, it wasn’t long before Dennis Woods and his three fellow boaters were in the water. The family members were on a fishing trip miles off the coast of Clearwater when water started filling up one side of their 25-foot-long power catamaran, “Money Well Wasted,” Woods said in a video released by Clearwater police .That caused the stern to drop, and water started rushing in. “It was probably less than five minutes before it rolled, and I didn’t have time to contact the Coast Guard,” said Woods, who turned 70 on Monday.It was the start of a roughly 20-hour ordeal for the four men that ended about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, when a Coast Guard plane found them along with the capsized boat about 26 miles offshore.The men set off around 9:30 a.m. Monday from the Seminole Street Boat Ramp, Clearwater police Chief Eric Gandy said during a news conference Tuesday morning before the men were found. Family members became concerned and called police around 8:30 p.m., telling officers that the men usually returned from their fishing trips around 4 p.m., Gandy said. Along with Woods was his uncle Clarence Woods, 90, and Cris Harding Sr., 42; and his son Cris Harding Jr., 18. They all live in Mulberry, in Polk County.The boat does not have a radio or other means of communication other than the men’s cellphones, Gandy said. The last ping from the men’s phones was on a tower near Palm Harbor.Gandy said cellphones stop working about 10 to 12 miles offshore.The Coast Guard began to search with a helicopter Monday evening and began again with an airplane at daybreak. “We’re staying in communication with the family members and our thoughts are with them during this stressful time,” Gandy said during the news conference.“They could just be broken down out of cellphone range,” Gandy said. “At this point we just don’t know. We’re hoping that with daybreak, the Coast Guard can quickly locate them.”Dennis Woods said that when the boat overturned, they focused on getting life vests onto Clarence Woods and Cris Harding Jr. “The one I was going to wear got hung up, and I had to just leave it,” he said.Woods said he figured it would be a while before rescuers showed up because it would be late before anybody realized that they hadn’t returned. He said they clung to the overturned boat and were able to stand on it at times.“The night was real tough, because the waves picked up, and we were having to try to get up on the rigging of it,” he said. “With the 90-year-old, I spent almost all night holding him up, and then he fell several times.”When the Coast Guard plane appeared, “that was the exciting time,” he said.A video released by the Coast Guard shows the men standing in the center of the boat’s hull and waving as waves lapped at their legs. The plane dropped a life raft and relayed the coordinates to a Coast Guard boat that picked up the men and brought them to the Guard’s Sand Key station, where family members were waiting.“Through the efforts of multiple Coast Guard crews and partner agencies we were able to safely recover the missing boaters and reunite them with their loved ones,” Ensign Gaige Garrett, operational unit controller at Sector St. Petersburg Command Center, said in a prepared statement. “We want to remind anyone going out on the water to have all necessary safety equipment to include Coast Guard approved life jackets, VHF radio, signaling devices and an emergency position locator beacon or personal locator beacon.” Despite the harrowing experience, it turned out to be a good birthday after all, Woods said, “now that I’m back on land.”

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