CLEARWATER, Fla. — He had been clinging to his capsized boat for nearly two days when rescuers found him early Monday afternoon. He was dehydrated, bruised and cut.
But Nick Schuyler was alive.
He had survived by wrapping his arms around the stem of the 21-foot fishing boat’s outboard motor and telling himself that his mother was not about to attend his funeral.
As the sun set Monday 35 miles off the coast of Clearwater, there was no sign of his three friends.
Schuyler, Will Bleakley, Oakland Raiders linebacker Marquis Cooper and former Detroit Lions player Corey Smith had gone out looking for black grouper early Saturday morning.
Schuyler told the Coast Guard that the anchored boat, which belongs to Cooper, flipped sometime Saturday afternoon and that the four of them had huddled near the boat for a time before drifting apart. They all were wearing life jackets, he said.
News of the men’s disappearance has reverberated around the NFL. At Lions headquarters, employees and players monitored TV reports and the Internet for updates.
“You just wish the best,” Lions guard Stephen Peterman said. “They found a guy today, so hopefully they’ll find him soon.”
Peterman and cornerback Travis Fisher went fishing with former Lions tight end Dan Campbell a few days ago in southern Louisiana.
“We all do this in the offseason,” Fisher said.
Cooper and Smith, who played together on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2004, have been on fishing trips before. Capt. Timothy Close, commander of the St. Petersburg Coast Guard sector, said at least one of the men was an experienced boater, and relatives provided the Coast Guard with Global Positioning System coordinates from past fishing expeditions.
Close said having found Schuyler “will help a lot because it helps us narrow the search area. Earlier, we were looking in 16,000 square miles. Now we will be able to narrow it down and divert the search and rescue equipment to a much smaller area.”
The search parties included four fixed-wing aircraft, two helicopters, the 179-foot cutter Tornado, a 110- foot cutter and a 47-foot rescue boat.
Despite the experience the men had on the water, some observers wondered Monday why they went out Saturday.
Mike Miller, who runs a charter service out of the same Seminole launch site where the foursome put their 21-footer in the water, said he went 12 miles offshore that morning, but by 2 p.m., he said, “I wouldn’t want to be 50 miles offshore in a 60-footer.”
He said he thinks the four fishermen “got suckered by the weather because it was nice in the morning.”
The Coast Guard wouldn’t speculate on the men’s chances of survival, but Petty Officer Robert Simpson said their size and good health were advantages. Cooper, 26, is 6-feet-3, 230 pounds, and the 29-year-old Smith is 6-feet-2, 250 pounds. The 25-year-old Bleakley was a tight end at the University of South Florida, where all the men had played.
“With all of these men being past, present football players, they do have a much larger physique than a lot of people,” Simpson said. “So their odds are going to be definitely in their favor.”
But after 18 hours in 64-degree water, hypothermia will set in, Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class James Harless said.
Smith’s family planned to drive to Florida from Richmond, Va., said Yolanda Newbill, one of Smith’s sisters.
“We have never lost hope,” Newbill said. “We have total faith that (he) will be coming home.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
