Pat Schoenberger, 38, and Jim Southward, 40, both professional sea captains, were rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter about 25 miles east of Cape Lookout, N.C., during the March 6 winter storm. (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun video)
It started as the kind of delivery Pat Schoenberger, an Annapolis sea captain, had made many times: Pick up a client's motor sailboat, ferry it to Florida and return home in a few weeks' time.
A brilliant morning sky beckoned as Schoenberger and Jim Southward, his friend and first mate, left Severn, Va., for Pensacola, Fla.
Thirty-eight hours later, a Coast Guard helicopter rescued them off Cape Lookout, N.C., amid pounding rain, 55-knot winds, 30-foot waves and the sensation, Southward said, that the ocean was tossing their 15-ton craft, Andante II, "like a cork in a hot tub."
What happened in between was a story of how, even in an era of high-tech sea mapping and navigation, the wisdom of seasoned mariners still can be no match for an angry sea.
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