I am a native of Key West, and my home port is in Ponce Inlet, Florida. My boat is a 31T Cape Horn with twin 350 Verados. We were 39 miles offshore when the unexpected happened.

Around 7 pm, a significant storm cell formed near Orlando and appeared to be moving south. However, once it moved offshore, it rapidly intensified and started heading north, directly toward us. By 8:15 pm, I had turned the boat north-northwest, hoping to put some distance between us and the storm. Unfortunately, by 8:30 pm, the storm had caught up with us, bringing winds in excess of 60 miles per hour, heavy rain, and unknown seas.

By this time, it was dark, and we were still nearly 40 miles from the inlet.

Our Garmin InReach, which we typically rely on for ship-to-shore communication, failed to transmit. We couldn’t send or receive any messages. Our main VHF radio was useless because the antenna had broken off, and our handheld VHF couldn’t reach anyone either.

We found ourselves caught in the storm for nearly an hour, which was 25 miles deep, and we unknowingly sailed right through its center. We faced massive, rough seas, with breaking waves crashing over the boat from every direction. Nearly everything on board that wasn’t tied down was either broken or flung around.

At one point, after taking multiple 4-foot breaking waves over the bow, center, and stern, we hit a wave that lifted the entire boat out of the water, leaving us airborne for what felt like an eternity, though it was probably only 3-4 seconds.

For the first time in my offshore career, we were completely at the mercy of the sea, immobile and helpless.

Due to the rain and rough seas, our electronics wouldn’t stay locked on the screen, so we had to rely on our compass heading. Once I managed to stabilize our heading, I had one of the crew grab all the life jackets. The seas were so rough that I couldn’t let go of the throttle or the wheel, and one of my guys had to strap my life jacket onto me. With no communication and no working VHF, I decided to activate our GlobalFix V6 EPIRB so at least someone would know we were out there.

Unbeknownst to me, the EPIRB antenna was missing. I thought it was broken, but fortunately, Search and Rescue still received our distress signal. As soon as we were close enough to shore to use our handheld VHF, we found out the Coast Guard had been looking for us for over an hour.

A huge thank you goes out to all our family, friends, captains, and industry colleagues who reached out. We are incredibly grateful that this situation turned out in our favor.