A Coast Guard boat approaches former University of South Florida football player Nick Schuyler as he sits on a capsized boat on Mar. 2, 2009. (U.S. Coast Guard, Getty Images / March 4, 2010)
One year ago, athletic trainer Nick Schuyler survived for 43 hours clinging to an overturned boat in the Gulf of Mexico, in an accident that took the lives of two National Football League players and another friend.
"Not Without Hope," Schuyler's memoir, recalls their profoundly sad struggle for life.
The story drew national attention as the Coast Guard searched for NFL players Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith, as well as former University of South Florida tight end Will Bleakley and Schuyler after they failed to return to Clearwater, Florida, from a Feb. 28 fishing trip. They had capsized at around 4:30 p.m. that day.
"The accident trails me like the wake of Marquis's boat, churning, foaming, pushing toward the horizon of every day," Schuyler says in the book, which was co-written by Jere Longman of the New York Times.
A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report released last March determined that the accident was caused by an improper attempt to dislodge a stuck anchor on the 21-foot vessel. The days following Schuyler's rescue were rife with speculation about what happened after the boat overturned, based on interpretations of his few words.
In the book, Schuyler dispels the various reports attributed to him, including that Cooper, who owned the boat, simply gave up, removed his lifejacket and drowned; that they were drunk and fighting; and that Bleakley drowned when he swam toward a light he thought was land.
Schuyler shares the reason for mustering little more than "They're all gone" when asked about his friends' whereabouts after he was rescued just before noon on March 2: He had watched them die, two in his own arms.
According to Schuyler's excruciatingly detailed account of his friends' final moments, Cooper was overcome by hypothermia in the hours before sunrise on March 1. The sickness left him slurring his speech, confused and at times violent, "like a person who had been drinking for days," he writes. Cooper lost consciousness as the others worked to keep him atop the wave- battered boat, and eventually died in Schuyler's arms.
At around 5 a.m., Schuyler recounts, Smith began to display similar symptoms, trying to hurtle himself away from the boat as Bleakley held onto his lifejacket, often taking both of them into the water.
The repeated episodes left Schuyler with little choice but to let Cooper's body float away so he could help Bleakley tend to Smith.
Smith, whom Schuyler described as among the nicest people he knew, was changed by the hypothermia, spewing expletives and trying to remove his life vest.
No more than 15 minutes after Cooper's body had been set adrift, a crazed Smith looked into Schuyler's eyes, cursed and said, "I'm a kill you," jerking his own lifejacket over his head and diving straight down into the water until he could no longer be seen, Schuyler writes.
The two remaining men spent the afternoon being knocked off the boat by waves and climbing back on, watching rescue helicopters and planes pass in the distance, and another plane fly right over them. Once, they thought they saw land miles away (the Coast Guard later called that possibility highly unlikely) and tried to swim for it, only to abandon the plan minutes later.
Bleakley eventually succumbed to the elements. Schuyler writes that he died around 6:30 p.m., with his last words a response to Schuyler: "I love you, too."
Schuyler was spotted by the Coast Guard cutter Tornado at 11:43 a.m. the next day. His body temperature had dropped to 89 degrees (32 Celsius) and he seemed to be going into the early stages of shock, according to one of the many Coast Guard accounts included in the book.
Schuyler says his weight dropped from 240 pounds to 208 by the time he returned home. He credits his survival to his friends' help and putting on extra layers of clothing before the accident because he was feeling seasick.
The doctor who treated him after his rescue said it was a "miracle" that he survived.
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