Five are rescued after boat sinks
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on July 26, 2017 7:56 AM
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Five Wayne County natives were rescued almost 10 miles off North Carolina's coast Sunday when their boat capsized during a fishing trip.
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Kenneth Freeman was able to send his fiancé's father their location from his iPhone while the group was adrift at sea.
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Map shows the location of rescue by the Coast Guard.
Stranded in the ocean 10 miles off the coast with only God to talk to, five Wayne County natives were growing more uncertain of their chances at survival as the minutes dragged by.
Kenneth Freeman, Brooke Neal, Payton Meadows and Alex and Patrick Roosen had gone to Topsail Island Sunday morning for a fishing trip.
They had done it before. They knew the waters and where the best fish were.
The quintet set out for Tom Boyette Reef -- an artificial reef about 10 to 13 miles off the coast -- on the Roosen brothers' boat.
"We had gone out with friends before this and caught mahi mahi bigger than me, so I wasn't the least bit worried about going out because we'd done it the last weekend and the conditions were pretty similar," Neal said.
Once they got out there, Freeman said the group realized the trip wouldn't be as fruitful as they hoped, so they decided to head back to shore.
But then the live well keeping their bait fish alive stopped working properly, Neal said.
It was allowing water in, but failing to cycle it out, she said.
And then a wave crashed into the boat.
"Soon as we turned around -- of course now the boat is angled differently on the waves -- and when we turned around a wave crashed and some water came in by the engine," Freeman said. "That weighed the boat down tremendously."
Freeman said Alex, who was driving, throttled the boat in an attempt to give it as much power as he could.
But nothing happened.
The boat went nowhere.
Neal said water was spilling out of the live well.
And then another wave hit them.
And the boat began to go down.
"Within just about 30 seconds we were standing in water up to our knees," Freeman said.
Neal said she scrambled to get everyone life jackets.
Freeman said Neal -- who is his fiancÃ(c) -- was able to get four life jackets and a pad that someone could float on, and off into the water the group went.
They would be stranded for almost two hours waiting for help to arrive.
The couple credits the hand of God, some human ingenuity and the response by the United States Coast Guard for saving their lives.
Just before the group leapt into the water, Alex tried to send out a mayday call, Freeman said, but they were unsure if anyone heard them.
"Alex grabbed the radio and said, 'Mayday, Mayday, boat overturned, five people in the water, Topsail Island, 10 miles offshore,'" Freeman recounted.
Freeman was able to hang on to his phone -- which he had just purchased about a week prior -- when he went into the water.
Standing at 6 feet 8 inches tall, Freeman waded back over to the boat -- now capsized -- and latched onto it.
"Somehow, I wedge my feet in-between the rail and the boat and when I do that, that gives my body the position to where I can hold onto that bottom V (of the boat) with my left hand, and keep my right hand with the phone up in the air," Freeman said.
Freeman said he clung to the side of the boat -- being knocked about by the waves -- for about 20 to 30 minutes, trying to get his phone and hands dry, before he managed to get signal with his cell phone and call 911.
Freeman relayed the information to 911 dispatchers and they said they would notify the Coast Guard.
Ten more minutes went by.
Freeman called 911 again -- this time, he said he told them he didn't know how anyone would be able to find the group if they were searching for them on a boat.
The dispatchers told him they would relay the information to the Coast Guard.
And then, silence.
As the group sat in the water -- miles from shore with 70 to 80 bait fish swimming around them on top of an artificial reef -- they remained unsure if their calls for help would be answered.
So they called on the only one who they knew would hear them -- God.
"Me and Payton held hands and prayed the entire time we were in the water," Neal said. "We prayed out loud and quoted every single scripture and Bible verse we'd ever learned, and every Bible story we ever knew our whole lives."
Freeman said the girls prayed out loud -- not stopping for a single minute -- the entire time they were stranded in the water.
"Finally I get enough service to where I call my fiancÃ(c)'s father (Don Neal) and I probably talked to him about 45 minutes on and off," Freeman said. "I probably called him 10 to 20 times, and he probably called me the same amount because I kept losing him."
Then, Freeman had an idea.
He decided to send Neal's father a pin of their location from Apple Maps on his iPhone.
Neal's father forwarded that information to the Coast Guard and Pender County EMS, allowing them to have the exact location of where they were stranded.
Then, Freeman's signal cut out again.
His hands were wet -- so was his phone -- and about 15 minutes went by before he was able to use his phone again.
So he called Neal's father again.
"I tell Mr. Don, 'We're not gonna make it, you're going to have to get somebody out here in the air to spot us. Nobody is going to be able to find us by boat,'" Freeman recounted.
As the minutes slipped by -- along with the group's strength and endurance -- their hopes for survival seemed increasingly bleak, Freeman said.
"About every five minutes this huge swell would come, and it was way bigger than any of the other waves, and one came and knocked me completely down off the boat," Freeman said. "At that time, underwater, I didn't have a life jacket -- I had given mine up -- and I had just lost all hope."
Freeman gave Patrick his cellphone and worked his way back to the boat to call Neal's father one last time.
Neal's father reassured him that help was on the way.
The group continued to pray, unsure of what would become of them.
Finally, an airplane rumbled in the distance.
"It was the most indescribable moment of my entire life. I probably will never, ever experience anything like that ever again," Neal said. "I was just crying and felt the presence of God like I had never experienced in my entire life. And to see that American flag painted plane -- and it just continually circled us and dropped smoke bombs until the boat got there."
A boat followed close behind the plane, arriving to rescue them about 15 minute after the plane popped smoke.
The group was pulled onto one boat, then transferred to another, around 11 a.m., Freeman said.
They were brought back to shore at Wrightsville Beach to meet with some of Neal's family, Freeman said.
By the time they were rescued, Freeman said they had drifted two miles inland, as the Coast Guard rescued them eight miles offshore.
Looking back on the experience, Freeman said there were "little signs from God" that kept reassuring him.
Perhaps the most poignant of the signs was right at the couple's feet when they were safely on the Coast Guard boat.
"We get on the boat, and under us "Freeman" -- which is my last name -- is engraved in the boat," Freeman said. "It was a lot of little signs from God to let us know he was with us the whole time."
And, Freeman said, without God, he is unsure if they would have made it out alive.
"The biggest thing is that if we didn't have God by our side and we didn't have God to talk to, I think that neither one of us would've been able to keep our composure like we did," Freeman said. "But because we are close to him, that did give us hope."