Adrift in Floyd: "It Was Like Watching Hope Float Away"

By Gerald Keeth/Aboard The U.S.S. John F. Kennedy

There were eight of us aboard the 150-ft. Gulf Majesty, pulling a loaded barge about 300 miles outside Jacksonville, Fla., our home port, heading to San Juan, Puerto Rico. We'd been at sea since Saturday, and we were just trying to avoid the storm. Our higher-ups told us to head north and take the long way around.

But then the hurricane took that sudden turn. The bad weather started pounding us Tuesday night. Waves were completely covering the boat, and we were pitching 46[degrees]. By early Wednesday, it started getting really bad. We were in seas of 45-to-55-plus ft., much bigger than anything I'd ever seen. We began getting into real trouble about 3 in the morning, when we started taking on water at the rudder assembly faster than our pumps could keep up.

We decided we'd have to abandon ship. Five minutes before we did, we heard over the radio that the Coast Guard had somebody on the way. We launched our life raft at about 8 in the morning in 55-ft. seas with 60-knot winds. It wasn't the easiest thing to do. Five men were able to get into it, and we tied it to the tug with a pair of lines. We wanted to pass things from the boat--flares and stuff--to the raft, and then climb in ourselves. But one rope broke, and then the other. It was like watching hope float away.

That left the three of us on board--David Lytle, Tim Chambers and me. We knew we had to get in the water or we'd get sucked under with the boat. To be honest, I was scared to death. We had life jackets on and life rings, but the life rings took off when we jumped, about 15 ft. into the water from the port side. We grabbed a broomstick to stay together and tried to paddle toward the raft, which was 300 yds. away. It was obvious that wouldn't work, and we knew we had to conserve our energy. Unlike the guys in the raft, we had an emergency locator beacon so the Coast Guard could find us.

The seas were really high, the wind was really high, and the tension was up there too. About 15 minutes after we got into the water, we watched the tug sink. She looked pretty much like the Titanic, except the Gulf Majesty went down stern first. I'd been with her about two years, and my heart was really in her. My IBM laptop, my guitar, $500 worth of cigars, and the only picture I had of my father--he died in 1985--went down with the ship.

We turned our backs to the waves because our life vest in the front has a little pocket of air you can breathe if you're under water. I could hear each wave from behind me like a freight train coming. Then it sounded like a jet going past, as it hit me in the back like a 20-lb. sledgehammer. The waves were like five-story buildings--light green, with whitecaps on top. As they broke over me, it all turned a real royal blue, a real pretty, beautiful blue because of the light shining through.

We tried to keep each other's confidence up: "Don't worry...we're going to make it...there's no problem." But we were all saying our little prayers. The water wasn't that cold for the first three hours, but then we started losing our body heat.

We were listening and looking for anything. One of the other guys saw a helicopter from the J.F.K., and then as we crested on the next wave, we saw a second one coming. God, that was a beautiful sight. They came over us at about 500 ft., and we popped orange smoke flares. It was about noon. We had floated about 23 miles from where we jumped in.

The helicopters came around in a circle, into the wind, to get better control. Then they lowered a diver on a rope. Navy rescue swimmer Shad Hernandez came into the water about 30 yds. from us. He put a harness on each of us, and we were hauled into the helicopter, which was hovering about 15 ft. above the highest waves. I couldn't even hear it because my ears were so full of water. But when it got close, I could feel the beating of the blades in my chest. I'll tell you, that was a very nice feeling. Shad rode up on the rope with me--we were the last ones out of the water. I just kept saying, "You the man! You the man!" over and over again.