• John Braden •
• Originally published September 5, 2009 at 10:48 p.m., updated September 6, 2009 at 4:32 p.m.

James Phillips, 30, of Blessing, and two good friends kept a positive attitude in the face of harrowing odds, surviving a week of being lost at sea and fighting dehydration, starvation, jellyfish stings, sharks, hallucinations and close calls with rescue that never came.

"We never once lost faith that we were coming home. There were times when you have to pick each other up and just say look, we're going home. That was our motto, that we're going home. We didn't know when, we didn't know how long, but we knew we were going home."

Phillips, Curtis Hall, 28, of Palacios and Tressel Hawkins, 42, of Markham said they never lost hope that they'd be found.

The three received national media attention after what was supposed to be an overnight fishing trip on Friday, Aug. 21, turned into a survival test that pitted the three men against nature as they floated atop their capsized fishing vessel for eight days.

The men have been really good friends for years and even work together in Blessing, rebuilding and repairing boats and trailers for sale. They have made many day fishing trips in the Gulf in the past, but for this trip they decided to stay out overnight - a decision that changed their lives forever.

The crew headed out on that Friday and trolled the water that evening, Phillips and Hall said. As the sun set and fishing for the night ended, the three went to bed, but not for long.

Hawkins awoke in the middle of the night with water inside the boat and quickly woke the other two men, who had not even a minute to react before the boat flipped over.

"I was able to get three distress calls out from the radio before we went over," Hall said. "But I guess it's kind of hard to hear a radio signal when it's 8 feet under water."

Immediately after the boat flipped, Hall asked Phillips where the flares were located in the boat. A stunned Phillips had to be asked twice before saying they were in the center console.

"I was in shock because I couldn't believe what had just happened," Phillips said. "Once I told him where they were, he dove into the water, up under the boat and grabbed the coast guard bag."

The bag included what the men saw as life-saving flares, and they proceeded to shoot all six of them, hoping workers on a nearby oil rig would see and call for help. The men said the rig was in plain sight during the day, about 5 miles away from the boat.

As the sun came up, it became clear that nobody had seen the flares and they started to embrace the fact that the trip had turned into a survival test.

"We all talked about what we really thought was going to happen, and I said that the chance they'd find us was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack," Hall said.

But even while this may have been true, the men never lost hope and would make trips up under the boat on a daily basis to find supplies.

"We started the next morning going under the boat and checking compartments," Phillips said. "We had to find what we had and what we didn't have, and what there was for us to survive on."

• How many days could you survive stranded at sea?

• • 1-2 51% 85 votes
  • 3-5 20% 34 votes
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  • More than 10 20% 34 votes

  167 total votes.

They were able to salvage two gallons of water, two cases of beer, a week-old pack of crackers and some chewing gum.

When the boat flipped, gasoline leaked out of the tank and filled the compartment under the boat, Hall said. So, when they tried to eat the crackers, he said it was like taking big bites of gasoline.

"It got to the point where it was really hard to eat that stuff," Phillips said. "We all ate a little bit to try to keep our strength up because that sun drains all your energy and we knew we were not getting enough fluids. And not having enough to drink was really our only concern."

The men each drank a beer in the morning and a beer in the evening for the first six days. On the sixth day, the men started drinking the two gallons of water they had found the first night. It was then that the seriousness of the situation really hit hard, because their rations were quickly diminishing.

But it was also on the sixth day that the men made an amazing discovery.

"I was scavenger hunting under the boat and I found the fresh water tank hose hanging down in the water. I asked Curtis what side the fresh water tank was on and he said my side so I dove back down and grabbed that hose."

The men had no idea whether the tank had leaked and filled with salt water or whether the pump, which was attached to the hose, would allow the release of any water. After clearing the nozzle and being sprayed in the face, Phillips made a spirit-lifting announcement to the men. The water was fresh.

"You could just see all of our eyes light up when that water hit our mouths," Phillips said. "At that point we knew we had thirty gallons of fresh water at the other end of that hose, so all that day, we sucked on that blue hose."

The hose, which was only about as big around as a finger, was about 10 feet long and the men had to suck the water through the pump, so getting water out of the hose wasn't an easy task. But each of the men took their turns that day getting all the water out they wanted to drink.

"We knew at that time that with 30 gallons of fresh water, having already survived for six days on some beer and half a gallon of water, we could make it out there much longer, not that any of us wanted to stay out there another day," Phillips said. "But we knew we could make it another 8 or 9 days or more if we had to. We were in it for the ride, and we were coming home."

Finding the fresh water supply could not have come at a better time to lift their spirits because, just the day before, they had seen a Coast Guard jet fly past them once to their East and once to their West, but it didn't see them. Their hopes had been diminished and finding the water gave them the strength they needed to keep holding on.

Every day the men went back under the boat to try to find more supplies and Phillips said after awhile they kind of enjoyed it because it gave them something to do during the day. What wasn't fun, they said, were the swarms of jellyfish that would surround the boat every night, stinging the men on their arms and legs.

"Every night they would come out and completely surround us," Hall said. "But every evening it was kind of neat because there'd always be some kind of a feeding frenzy."

One night, however, this feeding frenzy turned into a horror-movie-like scenario when the three found themselves surrounded by more sharks than they could count.

"That night, this big group of bait fish came up, and a huge group of tuna came up and started eating all of them," Hall said. "While we all watched, I heard James say 'Look, is that a shark?' and I looked and it was. And it was a big one."

In a matter of seconds, they were surrounded by large sharks on all sides of the boat.

"All of a sudden, there was another one and another one," he said. "It was like a movie. It was unbelievable because they were everywhere."

One even jumped across the back of the boat while Hall was "getting a closer look" at the sharks.

"You will lose all fears of everything when you spend eight days stranded in the Gulf of Mexico," Phillips said. "You will feel every emotion a body can possibly feel. It's just unreal."

Each of the three men struggled with hallucinations from time to time, including having conversations with people who weren't there, thinking pizzas had been delivered to the boat and seeing people who weren't there.

"One day, about midday, I was sitting there and I saw a guy swim up to the boat and he asked if I wanted a biscuit and some coffee," Phillips said. "I said yes and walked over and grabbed it from him and went back and sat down and Curtis asked me what I was doing. I told him the guy just gave me a biscuit and coffee and then looked down and saw that my hands were empty."

The men said it always took them a couple hours to recover in the morning and get a grasp on where they were and what was happening. And even on that eighth day at sea, when the fishing boat came to their rescue, they had to convince themselves that it real and not just another one of the hallucinations.

The day after the Coast Guard had officially called off the search for the missing men, a fishing vessel happened across them, saving their lives and bringing the three home to their families.

"The most dramatic part of the whole experience had to be when we knew for sure the boat was coming to pick us up," Philips said. "We just kept wondering if we were really seeing what it looked like we were seeing."

Hall said when the boat was pulling up, the men lost it because, in that moment, they were finally going home.

"My life is changed forever," Phillips said. "We live in a world that is high pace and life is too short for that. I will spend a lot more time with my kids and my family than I have in the past. It's one of those things we all take for granted each and every day. We get up, put clothes on, go to work and we don't leave much time for our families. But that's something that's going to change around here."

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