Miami - A group of off-duty sheriff's officers on a morning fishing trip near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, rescued a couple who had been treading water all night after falling off their boat near Key Largo and drifting more than 100km.
“We were all stunned, we all looked at each other and asked ‘are we seeing what we think we're seeing’,” Keith Salvis, of the Broward Sheriff Office's fire rescue department told a local NBC affiliate.
The couple, Sean McGovern, 50, and Mellisa Morris, 52, were in the water for 14 hours without life-jackets or signalling devices.
When they were found on Saturday morning, they told their rescuers they had fallen off the back of their boat the previous evening.
The fishing party contacted the US Coast Guard.
McGovern and Morris were taken ashore, treated for mild hypothermia and jellyfish stings, and picked up by friends, US Coast Guard spokesman Mark Barney said.
“As empty as the ocean was today, with only another two or three boats, they might have been out there for another two or three days and who knows what fate might have held,” Salvis told the television station. - Reuters