NEW ORLEANS — A group of three friends who went out fishing in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend had to literally fight for their lives before the U.S. Coast Guard was able to rescue them.
The men had gone out Saturday on a fishing trip, hoping to catch red snapper, but began having engine problems 25 miles offshore, WWL reported.
“Started taking on water. Tried to make it back in and went under,” Luan Nguyen, one of the fishermen, told WWL. “Tried to make it back in and it was too choppy. The boat started to take on too much water, so it just sank.”
The 24-foot boat sank at approximately 10 a.m. on Saturday, but the boaters were not found until 7 p.m. on Sunday, NOLA.com reported.
Concerned family members reported the men missing to the U.S. Coast Guard on Saturday evening when they hadn’t arrived home.
“We made a distress call on the VHF radio to the Coast Guard and let them know that we’d taken on water,” Phong Le, one of the boaters, told ABC News. “And not even seconds after that the boat was nearly halfway in the water.
Le had been spending the day with Luan Nguyen and Son Nguyen, who tied two ice chests together to create an improvised float to cling to in the open water, ABC News reported.
“That was critical in us surviving — tying the ice chests together,” Luan Nguyen told ABC News. “Happened to be that one of the ice chests actually had water and fruit in there.”
On Sunday morning, however, the men said they saw sharks circling them in the water.
“The head part was in front of me and the shark just from out of nowhere bit the (lifevest),” Luan Nguyen told WWL. “So, I pushed the shark and then I tried to push his nose. That didn’t do anything. So, I stuck both of my thumbs and jabbed him in the eyes and it took off.”
When the U.S. Coast Guard arrived, officers could see the men actively fighting off sharks in the water, CNN reported.
The U.S. Coast Guard shared videos of the rescue on its Facebook page, showing the shipwrecked group being pulled to safety.
Two of the men had hand injuries and one had hypothermia, CNN reported, but the Coast Guard said all three were in stable condition.
Though all three men are expected to make a full recovery, Luan Nguyen told WWL he is not in any rush to go back in the water, saying, “My offshore fishing career is over.”
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