His voice was broken due to poor communication. But on Dec. 3, Joe DiTomasso left a message with his daughter: A sailboat trip to the Florida Keys was going well.
Then the 76-year-old former auto mechanic from New Jersey became unresponsive.
Over the next 10 frantic days, the fear grew as the silence continued. The The Coast Guard launched a massive 21,000-square-mile search for DiTomasso and his friend, Kevin Hyde, 65.
Two men named Minnie and a dog named Minnie left New Jersey in a 30-foot sailboat for Marathon, Florida, but have not been heard from since reaching North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
“We were mentally preparing for the worst,” Nina DiTomasso, 37, told USA TODAY.
It wasn’t until Tuesday, when a tanker spotted what appeared to be a sailboat more than 200 miles off the coast of Delaware. On the deck, people were waving their hands and flags. A tanker came alongside and took them to safety.
Nina DiTomasso said, “When we heard the news, we all started screaming and crying and cheering because it was amazing.”
On Wednesday evening, they again approached the New Jersey shore and sailed into New York Harbor, this time aboard a 600-foot vessel.
When the tanker picked them up, Nina DiTomasso said, the men ‘just passed out.”
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Designed for warm weather
DiTomasso’s family said the pair were boating friends and were looking for some warm winter weather.
DiTomasso was an experienced boater, his daughter said, and he worked as a longtime auto mechanic, but often stole away to go saltwater fishing. His experiences were primarily in electric boats, he said.
“He was on edge every second,” she said. “He just loved fishing.”
Most recently, he spent a year living on a boat in a Cape May marina, where some nicknamed him “Joey the Tomato,” said DiThomasson’s son-in-law, David Reistad, 38.
As the family gathered for Thanksgiving, DiTomasso was excited to join a friend he knew from the marina for a new trip.
They would sail a friend’s sailboat south of Cape May to Marathon in the Florida Keys.
DiTomasso was had made the trip before, though not in a sailboat.
“Dad has done it once before, but with other friends on their boat. And it was a great experience,” said Nina DiTomasso. “He was so excited.”
Hay’s family could not immediately be reached.
Although DiTomasso’s daughter believed in her father’s sailing skills, she knew less about his route. The two planned to “hop from port to port,” DiThomasson’s daughter said, but she didn’t know each leg would be in open water off the coast or along the Intracoastal Waterway, which runs down the Atlantic coast.
They left on November 27. Nina DiTomasso knew she would have cell service and called her family to update her.
The vessel was a Catalina 30 sailboat, a popular inshore cruising design from one of the largest sailboat manufacturers. A typical model has one mast with two sail rigs and a small diesel engine. Without major changes, it would have tanks for fresh water that would last two people for several days.
But unlike the usual white glass boat, this hull was a brilliant dark blue. The name “Atrevida II” adorned her transom. This word has several meanings in Spanish. One of them is “boldness”.
To the open sea
His father began calling family or friends with regular updates.
Nina DiTomasso was at home outside Philadelphia while her father was on a trip. He said he was a crew last heard from after exiting Oregon Inlet on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
This meant that the crew left New Jersey and crossed the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
Before them lay the southern coast and the blue waters of Florida. Before that, however, the outer coast was a stretch of barrier islands, raised above shallow waters by waves and ocean currents. Its moving waters have long earned it the nickname “Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
A friend of the men said he was talking to DiTomasso when his phone went dead. At first, no one panicked. He often forgot to charge his phone.
Another friend asked the marina and it seems that Kevin’s phone is also dead.
“So my mom looked at my dad’s credit card statement and he hasn’t made any new purchases since Dec. 3,” she said. “That’s when we got really worried.”
Days passed without words, and then days passed. December 11 The Coast Guard was alerted that the two sailors had expired and then launched a search from Florida to New Jersey, the agency said.
US Navy vessels and commercial and recreational vessels, along with Coast Guard cutters and aircraft, participated in the search.
“They worked hard day and night. They sent planes, helicopters to search and posted it on social media,” said Nina DiTomasso.
He said Coast Guard officials said the boat had previously had generator problems and had sunk, but then refloated.
But with no cell phone service, the DiThomasson family didn’t know where to find Atrevida II. They did not know how much food or water was on the plane.
Nina DiTomasso told a TV station: “My friends and everybody said, ‘If anyone’s going to survive this, it’s ‘Joey Tomato.’
Reistad said he fears online that if the boat becomes disabled, it could be pushed by currents along the outer coast and eventually pulled by the Gulf Stream.
This ocean river is a powerful water current that flows north along the Atlantic coast. Somewhere offshore—perhaps a few miles away—perhaps 75 miles—the boat reaches the edge of the current.
“They probably got caught up in the Gulf Stream” and “couldn’t do anything about it, but just got pulled north,” Reistad said. “It was over 20 degrees in the north yesterday.”
After entering the Gulf Stream, the crippled boat would be pumped northward, drifting farther and farther offshore toward the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
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Observed from the ship
On Tuesday, more than two weeks after the men’s tour began, no one had heard from Atrevida II.
Then someone on the tanker Silver Muna, which was in the middle of the Atlantic passage carrying fuel from Amsterdam, noticed the sight on the open ocean.
Aboard a small sailboat, two men waved their hands and raised a flag. The hull of their boat was light blue.
Photos posted online by the Coast Guard shed some light on Atrevida II’s condition. They don’t have a boat’s mast, that is, its sail has fallen. Some cable lines and other deck equipment that ring the edge of the deck for safety appear to have all been destroyed.
Relatives said they later learned that the boat had no fuel or electricity. After a storm near Hatteras, her radios and navigation equipment were out of order.
After the drift, the men were without water for two days, cutting lines to extract the last drops, they later said.
“They’re in the middle of the ocean, with no power, nothing,” Reistad said. “It’s amazing.”
The men and dog were brought aboard the tanker shortly after 4 p.m. An evaluation by the ship’s medical staff revealed no immediate concerns, the Coast Guard said.
“This is a great example of the maritime community working together to ensure the safety of life at sea,” said Daniel Schrader, a spokesman for the Coast Guard.
Schrader also emphasized the importance of mariners traveling with what’s known as an “EPIRB,” or Emergency Indicating Radio Beacon. This allows the people on the ship to communicate their position emergency first responders.
On Wednesday evening, the ship arrived in New York to meet with the family. Nina DiTamasso drove from her home in Pennsylvania to meet him.
DiTomasso said he experienced high winds and mountain waves. He said the boat lost power, rigging and rudder.
“I’ve never seen such strong winds,” he said in a video showing Coast Guard personnel carrying men from the tanker to shore.
Hyde praised the crew of the Silver Moon for noticing “the size of his ship and the size of the ocean compared to the toothpick I was sailing on,” ABC7 reported.
During their ordeal, DiTomasso said she didn’t believe she would ever see her family again, explaining what helped her: “My grandson. And the cross of Jesus. I wake up every morning and kiss him and say. Our Father.” is she.
Photos posted on Facebook by the Coast Guard showed the men, accompanied by a dog, who were picked up in New York on Wednesday night.
Nina DiTomasso said she plans to “just hug him” and then stay with her father in New York. The trip, which began on Thanksgiving weekend, did not go as planned. Instead, he said he ended up with a “Christmas miracle.”
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Credit: Associated Press
Chris Kenning is a national reporter. Reach out to him on Twitter @chris_kenning.
