Boater survives 6 hours in ocean
Floats alone 20 miles off coast before spotted
By Veronica Gonzalez Staff Writer veronica.gonzalez@starnewsonline.com
Wrightsville Beach | Sheer will kept Steve Bright alive for more than six hours Saturday as he floated 20 miles off the coast after he fell off his boat.
With no life jacket, the hours crawled by for the 55-year-old Wilmington man, wearing only his swimming shorts and a wristwatch.
One. Two.
He was supposed to pick up his daughters and take them out on his 32-foot Contender boat that morning after he went fishing.
Three. Four.
Boats passed by him 100 yards away, 200 yards away. No one saw him.
Five. Six.
A recreational boat named the
Reel Obsession encountered him in the water and took him aboard about 5:17 p.m.
Then came the U.S. Coast Guard, which had been searching for Bright all afternoon after receiving a call about an unmanned boat.
"Every hour he said, 'I'm gonna try one more hour to stay afloat,'?" said Boatswain Mate Second Class Danny Jancauskas.
After he was rescued, Bright stepped off the Coast Guard boat Saturday evening, his torso and head red from sun exposure.
Wrapped in a gray blanket, he walked up the pier at the Coast Guard station on the southern end of the beach to the sound of applause.
"It's good to be back, I'll tell you that," he announced, smiling to the small crowd that gathered at the end of the pier.
One by one, family members and friends appeared at the station. Then his wife, Dava, entered the room. Their eyes locked and they embraced.
She let out a nervous, joyous giggle.
His heart rate appeared OK. His blood pressure, though, was slightly high. Not surprising for a man who had been in the water without a life jacket that long.
Bright went fishing Saturday morning by himself. When he was trying to reel in a fish, his line began crossing the line of a second fishing pole.
To make sure the lines wouldn't get tangled, he lifted the second pole to try to fit it in a rod holder. The boat was traveling on autopilot at 5 knots.
"Next thing I know, I'm head over heels," he said. "I hit the water headfirst."
When he surfaced, he was about 2 inches away from the boat; it was just out of his reach. That was about 10:30 a.m. The wind was between 5 and 10 knots and the water temperature was 83 degrees, Jancauskas said.
About 1 p.m., someone called to report a boat without anyone on board.
That's when the Coast Guard search began. By boat and by helicopter.
Other boaters joined in.
Bright's wife called her family and friends for support.
They prayed.
"I told him it's something you see on the Discovery Channel," Jancauskas said. "It's pretty amazing to float out there for six hours with no flotation."
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