'Thank God they had a Sat phone': Good Samaritan recounts ocean boat rescue

A red-flare rose along the horizon and midnight sky 45 miles off the Grand Strand coastline. It finally provided rescuers a clue as to where three fishermen floated after their boat sunk.

Michael Ferraguto Jr. throttled his sailboat towards the source as another red, smoky trail of light flew into the air. This one came from much closer. Moments later, Ferraguto spotted the strobe light atop a life raft. Inside were three crew from a sunken fishing vessel that rescuers spent hours trying to find.

Ferraguto turned a floodlight on the raft as it bobbed in the five-foot waves. The light let them know someone was there, their plight now over.

Two weeks later, Ferraguto still has one big question.

“How did they get hit by a freighter?”

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May 31 was like any other late-spring day in the Myrtle Beach area. Temperatures reached 90 degrees, a slight rain during the day. Another unremarkable day.

On Ferraguto's way from Charleston to Beaufort, North Carolina, the Coast Guard contacted Ferraguto shortly before midnight about the Aunt T fishing boat. The Coast Guard asked if he set off his Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon — think OnStar for a ship.

“No” he replied.

It was then Coast Guard officials told him that the beacon for the Aunt T went off near his location and asked him to relay a call. He tried three times to no avail.

The Coast Guard told him the Aunt T fishing boat sunk after being hit by a freighter and asked him to head towards a life raft with reported survivors.

“I changed course and really pushed it,” Ferraguto said.

He dropped the sails on his boat, opting instead for the motor to provide better control as he didn’t know what he would find. The sailboat sped east, but he found nothing at the site of the beacon.

That is when — and Ferraguto said he is eternally grateful for this — the men on the life raft used a satellite phone to contact the Coast Guard. The agency asked them to send up a flare to help Ferraguto spot them as he searched the night waters waiting for rescuers to reach the area.

“All I can say is thank god they had a sat phone,” Ferraguto said.

He followed those flares until he spotted the light on top of the raft. Ferraguto circled them, as the choppy waters prevented him from getting close enough to rescue.

Ferraguto turned his flood light on the raft and saw three men, one with a broken leg, waiting for rescue.

“They knew I was there,” he said, “and they knew someone was there,” his voice inflection changing to convey that the men knew help arrived.

Ferraguto relayed the location to a Coast Guard helicopter that was nine miles away. The pilot asked Ferraguto to stay back 200 yards while they mounted their rescue.

The team arrived and Ferraguto said he watched the crew first lift the man with the broken leg into the helicopter. Then the other two men, one-by-one, were rescued from sea to air.

The three men were safe, but Ferraguto’s question remained, “How did they get hit by a freighter?”

During the incident, the Coast Guard told the freighter Maersk Weymouth that it hit and sunk the Aunt T. Ferraguto said he saw the freighter trying to turn around, only being told not to continue their efforts as the rescue team was already on scene.

The Coast Guard’s investigation into the collision remains open, said Lt. J.B. Zorn, chief of investigation for the Charleston Coast Guard Division. That process will likely take months and will look at what happened, ways to be safer and then any enforcement action, he said.

Ferraguto said he saw the Maersk Weymouth on his radar during the night. No other freighters were in sight. If he saw them on radar, he wondered how the Aunt T did not.

The satellite phone probably helped save the three, Ferraguto said. Without it, the southeast to northeast winds coupled with the Gulf Stream would have pushed the trio to deep into the ocean.

“They are in a life raft,” Ferraguto said. “They are heading to Scotland.”

This story was originally published June 14, 2018 at 3:41 PM with the headline "'Thank God they had a Sat phone': Good Samaritan recounts ocean boat rescue."