Not Without Hope

by Nick Schuyler

  A lot of time we were coughing and gagging from the water. My nose was running. We both had colds. We were spitting, and the one in front would get hit with loogies, or one person would put his finger to his nose and blow a snot rocket. We didn’t care. The waves washed it away in a minute.

  When we sat like that, one guy bear-hugging the other, there wasn’t a whole lot of talking. We would watch for the waves and yell, “Hold on, hold on!” and we would lean in and brace ourselves.

  “Hey,” Will said at one point.

  “Hey,” I said. “You all right?”

  His reply was tinged with fear. There was a sad tone to his voice, which was choked up. “I’m not going to make it through another night,” Will said. “No way.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “You won’t have to. They’re going to find us today.”

  I tried to brush it off, but I got scared, too. I felt sick to my stomach. Will always had an idea or a plan. He was the one who swam under the boat to get the life jackets. We were best friends. If he didn’t have hope, how could I? There had been four of us, and the cold and the salt water had gotten to Marquis and Corey. Now it was just me and Will. We could climb a little more out of the water, the two of us, bear-hugging each other, creating some heat. Still, we were worried about dehydration and the cold. We hadn’t eaten. Even after I saw two pro athletes not make it, even after one guy died in my arms and the other guy got away and died minutes later, I still never thought I was going to die. Then Will said what he said, and it began to sink in. Death had just happened in my lap. And it might happen again.

  IT WAS STORMING. The rain felt like it was coming horizontal. It was painful, like BBs to the face. The sky was the color of dishwater. It almost looked foggy. Our visibility was very low. We knew we were drifting in a strong current, but we had no idea if we had drifted five miles one way or ten miles the other way. We felt like the current was pulling us every which way.

  Will and I worked well together when we could see the waves in front of us. “Hold on, hold on!” we would yell. If a swell came from the side, we would scream, “One-two-three, lean, lean!” and we would shoulder into the wave to help us stay on the hull, almost like we were on a motorcycle taking a turn. Sometimes, even if we leaned in, it didn’t matter. Thousands of pounds of churning water would collapse on us and we couldn’t hold on. Or we would lean left or right and a wave would surprise us from behind and send us flying over the motor.

  As before, the waves swamping us from behind were the worst. We couldn’t always see or anticipate them, and then we would be thrown off the boat. You would come up and take another wave in the face and start choking on water. Sometimes it was a full minute before you could grab the boat again. This happened for hours.

  Early in the morning, the waves definitely changed form. They were choppy at first, eight to ten feet, and as the day went on, the waves came together into swells that were fifteen feet tall. I had been in big waves before in Lake Erie, seven-to eight-footers, but when you are in fifteen-foot waves, you have a completely different view. It’s one thing to be in a boat that’s upright in the water, and another thing to be on a capsized boat or floating in the water in a life jacket. When you can see, feel, taste all fifteen feet, it’s a lot different. When a wave comes at you, it’s a lot bigger. You see it like a dark mound. We would go up and up and up and then it seemed like we were at the top and it would flatten out and then we would seem to go up more. And then the wave would pass and you could see the back of it. The front was not as steep as the back. You would fall and fall and fall into the pit of the wave. The valley. You could feel it in your stomach. It was not as fast as a roller coaster, but it was like the first drop on one.

  Why is this happening to me? I asked myself all day. Why me? Please, God!

  Every time the boat came down off one of those big waves, particularly in the afternoon, it would go completely underwater. We had to brace ourselves. We knew we were going under and that the boat was going under. We would take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds. This happened consistently for hours.

  Will and I would have little conversations about the waves or food or wanting something to drink.

  “I’m so thirsty,” I said once.

  “I could go for a milk shake,” Will said.

  “I could go for a smoothie, my Cavaliers, and my bed,” I said.

  When a wave came, it wasn’t like you got hit by a short burst. It felt like a five-second push and you were just torn off the boat. It was like throwing a bowling ball at toothpicks. Whichever one of us was sitting in the back would turn around to see if a swell was coming. We would try to brace ourselves. But if it was too big or it came from behind and you didn’t see it, you would be slammed off the boat in a second. You hit everything, bone against metal, your knees, your head, your whole body bouncing like a ball off a backboard. I was ripped up from my belly button all the way around to my lower back. My groin was raw. My skin was so sensitive from the salt water. My balls were killing me. I was so scared and tired and sick and cold. It was hard and discouraging.

  Then you would go from that excruciating pain to being thrown in the water. Sometimes, when a wave came from behind, Will and I flew over the prop—there was nothing to stop us. My stomach would be right on the propeller, like I was body surfing or riding a Boogie board. My hands and the insides of my legs were bleeding from hitting the motor. I hit my head quite a few times.

  We must have fallen off the boat fifty times. A wave would come and throw us one foot away or fifteen feet away. Then we would be in the water and another wave would come and I was going, Oh shit, if this one breaks on me, I’ll be even further away.

  We would go underwater still sitting on the hull, or sometimes we would go off the side and fall even deeper underwater. Quite a few times, I thought the boat might go down and stay down. Constantly, I worried about what would happen if it stayed down and I was still attached to it. Could I get away? Would it suck me down with it?

  It was hard not to think, What’s the point of getting back on this boat? We had already lost two guys, and the weather was getting worse. Sometimes we went in the water and, exhausted, we didn’t attempt to get back on the boat right away. The waves were pounding and we stayed near the boat and tried to keep our heads above water as much as we could. Other times we would get one foot back on the boat, getting a perch, and another wave would come and rip us right off. Sometimes one of us stayed on the boat and the other one flopped in the water. If Will fell in, he would grab my shoulder and pull up, or I would grab him and give an explosive yank. Sometimes I pulled so hard, he would fly over the hull and back in the water on the other side—everything was so slick, there was nothing to grab on to. Other times, I would yank him up and he ended up pulling me in the water with him. It was a constant struggle, hardly a second to relax or catch your breath. Countless times, one of us would get halfway up the boat and fall back in the water, pounded underneath by the wave, and then rise to the top, choking, trying to spit the water out of his mouth.

  Getting back on the boat was like trying to throw your leg over the saddle of a horse, except that it was a sharp, jagged, moving, bouncing saddle. And the horse’s head wasn’t smooth and furry, it was the motor, and it was sharp, metallic, cold, and bucking.

  The majority of the work was done by the person sitting in front of the other, grabbing the motor, holding on with his feet. I was working out every day, since it was my job to be in shape, and I was stronger than Will. It felt warmer now that it was daylight. The sun wasn’t really out, but it helped Will and me create some kind of body heat as we bear-hugged on the hull. At first it was weird, but there was no other way to hold on. My face felt like sand from being salty.

  Paula Oliveira awoke again near dawn, and called the home of Rebekah and Marquis Cooper. But the family was moving, and the number had been disconnected. Paula didn’t have Rebekah’s cell phone number. So she turned on her laptop computer and Googled the C
oast Guard. She called the St. Petersburg station and apologized if she was calling the wrong number, but said that her boyfriend had gone on a fishing trip and had not returned. The Coast Guard officer seem to know Nick’s name and hers, too. The officer asked for Nick’s date of birth and the spelling of his name. He wanted Paula to describe Nick’s features. She said he was 6 feet 2 inches, 240, brown hair, green eyes, a big guy with a muscular build.

  “What’s this all about?” Paula asked.

  The officer explained that Rebekah Cooper, or a family friend, had contacted the Coast Guard and reported the boaters missing. They had been searching for them since about one thirty. Paula began sobbing. She left her number with the Coast Guard and asked them to pass it along to Marquis’s wife. Paula then called her father in Fort Lauderdale. She couldn’t speak. She was sobbing.

  “Paula, what’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Nick is missing.”

  As Paula spoke, her cell phone beeped. It was Rebekah Cooper. She was sitting in her car in the parking lot at the L.A. Fitness where Nick, Marquis, and Corey trained together. Rebekah was waiting for the gym to open at eight. She planned to go inside and ask for a phone number for Paula, who was also a member of the gym. In the meantime, the Coast Guard had passed along Paula’s number to Rebekah.

  Rebekah’s voice was calm and reassuring. The guys probably ran out of gas, or their GPS system wasn’t working and they were just drifting, she told Paula. They were probably fine and the Coast Guard would find them. It was daylight now; it would probably take only an hour or two. Paula didn’t call Nick’s mother. No need to alarm her over nothing.

  “I went from pure hysteria to okay,” Paula said. “It made sense. Of course that would happen. That gave me peace.”

  At about eight thirty, Paula made a second call to the Coast Guard in St. Petersburg. Rebekah Cooper had seemed unaware that Will Bleakley had also been on the boat. Paula gave Will’s name and birth date to the Coast Guard, along with a description of him—similar to Nick but with darker hair, 6 feet 3 inches, 230—along with his cell phone number.

  The morning was chilly. Paula opened the door to let her three dogs out and her feet got cold. She put on a pair of boots and a sweater with her jeans and drove to St. Paul’s Catholic Church on North Dale Mabry in Tampa. She had been raised Catholic but did not practice her religion. She arrived just as the service was ending, and walked in crying. People seemed to be staring at her. No one said anything. She went to a pew and sat by herself, asking God to bring Nick, Will, Marquis, and Corey home safely and soon. She stayed for ten minutes and drove to the home of her close friends Nery Tijerino and Kendall Lawson. The Coast Guard called Paula there in late morning, about eleven. She might want to inform Nick’s family now, an officer told her. The media were going to be alerted. Before eleven, the Coast Guard would confirm that there were four men missing, not three, and that two of them were NFL players.

  “High media interest is expected,” said a Coast Guard dispatch.

  Except for Nick Schuyler and Will Bleakley, no one could have known yet that the two NFL players were already dead.

  Earlier, Paula had become frustrated. “How could they not see them yet?” she wondered about the Coast Guard. Her friend Nery had admonished her, “Paula, you don’t know how big an area this is.”

  When the Coast Guard called her this time in late morning, she asked again what kind of progress it was making. The voice on the other end was comforting, supportive: “We’re very hopeful. We have a lot of light out now. It’ll be easier.”

  Paula called Nick’s mother, Marcia Schuyler, who lived with her daughter, Kristen, two hours south of Tampa, in Fort Myers. Marcia didn’t pick up the call. She was in her living room, speaking with Kristen, who had just walked in the door. Marcia would get back to Paula in a little while. They had some catching up to do.

  When the call went to voice mail, Paula was relieved. No one ever wants to tell a mother that her son didn’t come home.

  Next, Paula tried Kristen Schuyler. This was odd, Kristen thought. It was not like Paula to call that early.

  “What’s wrong?” Kristen asked.

  “It’s your brother,” Paula said.

  Kristen thought they had had a fight or had broken up.

  “He’s missing,” Paula said.

  Kristen felt dread in the pit of her stomach. She had driven home earlier in the morning from Tampa, where she had attended a black-tie fund-raiser for breast cancer the night before. She had texted Nick on Saturday night, telling him that Major League baseball players had been in attendance. He had not replied, but this didn’t alarm Kristen—Nick sometimes didn’t respond unless Kristen asked him a direct question. She had called her brother again this morning to tell Nick about her 5K race on Saturday. Her call went straight to voice mail. Now she knew why. Nick had not returned from his fishing trip. And now the weather had turned cold and windy. This could not be good. The Coast Guard was about to make an announcement on television.

  Kristen hung up with Paula, paced around her bedroom and then walked outside without speaking to her mother. She kept waiting for her phone to ring again to say that everything was okay, that Nick was safe and sound. The call didn’t come. Ten minutes later, Kristen returned and sat next to her mother in the living room.

  “Is everything okay?” Marcia Schuyler asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kristen said.

  Marcia noticed a blank look on her daughter’s face, as if she had been crying.

  “Oh my God, what happened to your brother?” Marcia said.

  Nick had not returned home from a fishing trip, Kristen said. Marcia went to the bathroom and threw up. They tossed some clothes into a bag, took a shower, and headed to Tampa. Kristen could hear her mother sobbing in the shower.

  She called her father, Stu Schuyler, and he became upset. He had phoned Nick the morning before, telling him the weather was expected to get bad and to come home early.

  “Damn it, I told him not to go out,” Stu said to his daughter. He was angry, yelling.

  “Dad, this is not the time,” Kristen said. “This is not going to help.”

  Kristen was usually the rock of the family. She didn’t cry until she got into the shower. Something is really, really wrong, she thought to herself.

  Paula Oliveira called Bob and Betty Bleakley, Will’s parents. The boys never made it back and the Coast Guard was looking for them. Betty replied that she had told Will the trip was a bad idea. Paula told her the Coast Guard had offered reassuring words. The search would be easier in the daylight.

  Within a half hour, Stu Schuyler called Paula. She tried to reassure him, but he was pessimistic. “I’m not oblivious to what Mother Nature can do,” Stu said.

  “We can’t think that way,” Paula replied. “We have to stick together and be positive.”

  “You’re right,” Stu said.

  The storm began to settle down in midmorning or late morning, the waves changing from chop to swells. They were less random, less crazy. Then we began seeing helicopters. You would hear them, then you would see them. They were all in the distance. We would see one, then fifteen minutes later we would see another. Then we didn’t see another one for an hour or two. We couldn’t tell if it was the same helicopter or not. It didn’t really matter. The helicopters were orange and white. We knew they were Coast Guard. We knew they were looking for us.

  We would see a helicopter and all of our attention would go to that. We would yell and wave our orange life jackets. We wouldn’t pay attention to the waves, and the next thing we knew, a swell would hit us from behind and flip us back into the water.

  The helicopters never came real close. It seemed like they were a mile away or more. They seemed higher than the one I thought I saw the night before.

  “Help, help, we’re down here!” we would scream. I tried to picture what they were looking at, and I had the same thought as last night: our boat would look like just another w
hitecap among thousands of white waves.

  We would see a helicopter and get ready to take our life jackets off and wave them, excited, saying to each other, “Here we go—this is it—this is our chance—they got us!”

  “You see one over there?” Will would say, and our hopes would go up, then deflate again. We’d get excited and then frustrated. It didn’t feel hopeless, but I felt I was not in control whatsoever. The effort Will and I were putting out was helping us to survive, but not to get rescued. It was like a roller coaster. Help was so near, and then it was gone again.

  We kept asking each other, “What else can we do?” We knew our chances were getting smaller and smaller. We were still somewhat hopeful, but not as excited. It was getting further and further along. They had missed us so many times before. I kept thinking about Marquis and Corey, worried that Will and I would begin to deteriorate, too.

  “I can’t believe they can’t see us!” I would yell.

  “How can they not see us?!” Will would scream.

  He thought about the flares that had been useless the night before.

  “I sure wish we had them now,” he said. “With those flares, we would have been saved.”

  AT ABOUT TEN thirty or eleven in the morning, I looked just off the right side of the boat and said, “What the hell is that?”

  At first I thought it was a white cloud in the water. But it moved closer and went under the boat. I think it was a squid. It had long, white, purplish-grayish tentacles. They were long and skinny, like a giant version of what we had used for bait the day before. Altogether, it seemed ten feet long. I couldn’t see its body, but I could see the tentacles hanging out from under the boat.

  Will looked, too.

  “Oh my God.”

  After all we had just gone through in the last twenty-four-plus hours, what could possibly make me more scared than I already was? This was just something else to freak me out. It wasn’t moving, it was just floating. The tentacles looked like the alien in Independence Day, when Will Smith is dragging it on the ground. Not snakelike, but wet, yolky leather. It was disturbing even to look at.