Details have come to light regarding a mysterious "ghost ship" which washed ashore on a popular Florida beach.
The 45-foot vessel, dubbed “Lady Catherine III,” came to shore earlier this week on Pensacola Beach. Its captain, Michael Barlow, spoke to WEAR News about its ill-fated voyage. Barlow had planned to take Lady Catherine III to Honduras for the summer, where he teaches scuba diving.
"When the season was over, I was gonna come back,” he explained. “My family and I were gonna move on board and take off after hurricane season."
Barlow and a pal left at the beginning of June, planning to travel 884 miles from Fort Pierce, FL across the Gulf of Mexico before landing in Honduras. For the first week of their journey, there was little issue.
"The forecast was beautiful," Barlow recalled. "We had 15 to 20 knots on our backs all the way home to Texas."
But then, as they passed through Louisiana, a savage storm descended upon the small vessel. "The seas started building, wind hit us, and it was 30 to 40 knots," he said. "It pretty much stayed that way for the next two days."
Complicating matters further, Barlow’s mate became hypothermic and was largely absent while the captain guided the boat.
"The autopilot broke in the first storm, so we had been hand steering for three days," Barlow explained. "[My friend] had all the symptoms of hypothermia and he went down below and passed out. He was unconscious throughout all of this.”
Barlow continued: “I'm sitting there and watching these seas build, so I started hammering on the radio going through the procedures just seeing if there was someone within reach that could help us. No one was responding. I went through 'pon pon pon pon, mayday mayday!' — and no response."
Eventually, he noticed an S.O.S. feature on his Garmin radio. When activated, it immediately connected him to the Coast Guard. "They told me they were looking at the radar and said, 'You are fixing to get slammed again. We can come get you right now. But we are three hours away and you have to leave your vessel,'" Barlow recalled. "I said to come get us."
New Orleans-based rescue swimmer Richard Hoefle undertook the task of extricating the two men.
"One of the big challenges with getting out there, apart from the distance, was the weather," Hoefle explained. "We were going to be dodging storms, flying left and flying right to get around these storms passing in the Gulf. When we showed up. The boat was just battered. It was moving back and forth in the waves. I was getting seasick from the helicopter just looking at these guys."
Hoefle proceeded to jump from the helicopter and maneuver his way through the fierce waves to the boat.
"It was like a movie," Barlow said of his rescue. "Bro jumped in out of a helicopter in these mad big seas and swam over to us with nothing but snorkel gear on," he marveled.
"You can just see the relief as they see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Hoefel recalled of reaching the boat.
Barlow and his pal were flown to Panama City, Florida and returned home shortly after. When a passerby found Lady Catherine III run aground this week, she found Barlow on social media and summoned him to the scene.
While scavengers had relieved the boat of all valuables before Barlow arrived, he contends the experience, and his rescue, were more valuable than Lady Catherine herself.
"I've got a 9-year-old son and a beautiful wife," he said. "We had plans to go sail and travel and we worked real hard to get here, so I was gonna come home."
