‘What do we do?’ Biloxi man recounts harrowing hours after boat sank with 5 on board

The survivors are still sore.

Four days after their boat sank deep in the choppy waters of the Gulf of Mexico, their muscles are aching from the force of a current they say carried them 12 miles east, and from the four-and-a-half hours they spent treading water, clinging to coolers and worrying of sharks.

“Holy cow,” Easton Barrett, a 33-year-old part-owner of an underground drilling company who lives in Biloxi recalled thinking when the boat motors cut and water rushed in. “What do we do?”

The five men launched from Jackson County early Saturday morning with bait, coolers and tackle, Barrett said. They motored north of Horn Island, hopped between reefs and moved on through the waves. It was sunny and calm, Barrett recalled. A nice day.

When the motors stopped at their last reef, no one thought much of it, Barrett said. They turned the keys.

But the boat was already sinking.

Water rushed in, fast. Floating coolers hit their legs and the back of the boat went under. “Get the life jackets!” Barrett recalled a friend yelling. Someone screamed to grab the emergency beacon, which would alert the Coast Guard. There was no time to find the flares. In less than a minute, the 28-foot boat was gone, Barrett said.

And the five friends floated together in the Gulf.

They put life jackets on in the water and locked arms so the waves would not pull them apart, Barrett said. The coolers popped up, one by one, from the depths. They grabbed them and used them to float.

Barrett said he fished in his pocket for a knife in case of sharks. Then he realized he still had his phone. He let the water drip from it, and with fading battery power, he began to record a video.

“To tell my mom I love her and to tell my friends and family that I love them,” he said. “So they’re not wondering what happened.”

A friend pressed the emergency beacon’s button.

And the group began to wait.

On land, the Coast Guard got the signal at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, said James Hague, a public affairs specialist for the agency. Rescuers started to search.

For four-and-a-half excruciating hours, the boaters sat in the water hitting their emergency beacon. “Just hoping and praying to God that somebody sees us,” Barrett said.

For a long time, no one did. Barrett tried to call 911 but no calls would go through.

Finally, they saw it: a boat with the Coast Guard’s orange racing stripe, and two men on the lookout.

It made several passes before it found them, Barrett said. The waves had grown by then, and a friend kept hitting the button on the beacon device. Barrett held his phone up, hoping the sun would reflect on his screen and catch the Coast Guard’s attention. A friend held up one of the coolers.

When the boat found them, Barrett said the group cried with joy.

“It felt,” he said, “like winning the lottery.”

They were 16 miles off shore, Hague said.

The Coast Guard took them to Dauphin Island, where their families were waiting. No one was injured, Hague said.

“We’re still a little shook up,” Barrett said Wednesday. But he plans to return to the water with the personal beacon device called EPIRB, which he credits for saving their lives.

“Get one,” he said.

Without it, “we probably wouldn’t be here.”

This story was originally published May 30, 2024 at 5:00 AM.