Amesbury Couple On Cruise Ship Helps Rescue Men Stranded At Sea

[Sunlei]

BOSTON (CBS) – A luxury cruise turned into a life-saving operation for an Amesbury couple. Roy Nagy thinks fate had something to do with his wife waking up in the middle of their first night at sea, and opening the sliding glass door in their cabin. They were en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico to St. Martin on a Royal Caribbean ship called Jewel of the Seas.

“We started to go back to sleep, and right after that, we started to hear voices out in the water. We heard, ‘Hey, hey, hey, hey,’” said Roy Nagy. “We sat and thought about it for a minute and then we said, ‘Somebody’s out there and we better make a call.’”

Two others also thought they heard those cries for help. The ship’s captain took the reports seriously, turning the cruise ship around and searching with flood lights. After about an hour, they found a white spot in the ocean. “When it finally hit on something that was clearly sticking out of the water a little bit, that was a rush,” said Nagy. “As the ship got closer, we saw the guy there waving. That’s when we really got goose bumps.”

The captain sent a rescue crew in a smaller boat. It returned with three American citizens who live in St. Croix. They had capsized in their speedboat, which was floating upside down for ten hours. At one point, that boat’s owner, Matt Spencer, was trapped in the cabin under water. “I really just took away from it that there’s a lot of nice and really good people in the world,” he told WBZ.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/10/10/amesbury-couple-on-cruise-ship-helps-rescue-men-stranded-at-sea/

[Eleanors38]

1. Good job all the way around. Thanks for posting this.

[intaglio]

2. always carry an EPIRB

even if it is only a speedboat.

[Sunlei]

3. I daydream about a small boat someday. What 'EPIRB' would you suggest?

[intaglio]

4. The best you can buy with a "float free" mount

They're all built to an international standard and the only real limitation is battery life and the brightness of any flashing beacons. Some will have 2 way satellite comms channel but most of the small boat owners here don't bother with that. Basically look for something over $200.

About the only thing cheaper is an emergency satellite messaging service which, when activated, will send your GPS position to a predetermined phone number. These come in at about $130.

[Sunlei]

6. Thanks!

[Le Taz Hot]

5. The one and only cruise I've ever been on

we rescued 3 Cuban refugees. I'm not sure how long they'd been out there but it looked as if they'd been there for quite awhile. The cruise ship people took them to the infirmary and we were told they were being cared for. Unfortunately, they made the announcement that they tried to get other island nations (Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Haiti) to take them and they were refused and sent back to Cuba.