Barry's Blog

A man who fell off his boat and spent about six hours in the ocean before being rescued by his own brother suggests the terrifying experience has served as a "wake-up call" that has given him a totally different perspective on life. Craig McCabe, a Newport Beach attorney, told reporters at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, California, "I was vascillation as to whether I was going to go back (to work) and make as much money as I could to support the yacht I wanted to fix up..."

The ordeal occurred on a Thursday in January when McCabe, piloting his yacht alone, was on his way around 4:00 a.m. from Marina del Rey to Newport Harbor for some repairs to his boat. He had been leaning over the boat's stern to see if the propellers had been entangled in a lobster trap-line when, as he was motoring through the morning fog around 8 a.m., a rogue wave smashed his 65-foot vessel, Heather (McCabe would later admit that he was mostly angry with himself for piloting his yacht alone - a cardinal violation of safe boating - for someone experienced in sailing). In the water, McCabe grabbed a trailing boat line but couldn't hang on. The rope broke one of his fingers and cut his face, leaving him bleeding. He was sure that sharks lurked nearby. About one-and-a-half miles from the Long Beach breakwater, he could barely keep afloat in the heavy jacket, jeans, and shoes that he wore, but didn't want to shed them in the 58-degree water. "I could see the shoreline," McCabe said, yet swimming to land was out of the question, as it was too far away. When a passing fishing boat failed to spot him, he began to lose hope. "Then things got desperate," said a tearful McCabe, flanked by his two adult daughters and doctors at the hospital. "I couldn't swim very far. The water was cold."

As he began to panic, McCabe spotted a buoy about a half-mile away, and decided to swim for it. As he headed toward the buoy, he spotted a blue balloon skipping along the surface in his direction, which he grabbed, and stuffed into his jacket for flotation. Within an hour the balloon had deflated, and being tired and cold, he began to shake, and started to slip under the sea between breaths. While McCabe tried to stay afloat, a friend returning to Catalina in the Catalina Express commuter boat spotted his vessel motoring toward the island. Authorites began scouring the 26-mile-wide channel with five boats, as well as three Coast Guard helicopters and a C-130 airplane.

By now, McCabe had been in the water for nearly six hours. As he swam up to the buoy, he faced some unexpected guests: five sea lions who were not willing to budge from their perch. "There was one male sea lion and he was very territorial...he had pretty good size teeth." At this point, hypothermia had dropped his body temperature into the 80's, doctors later said. Just before he gave up hope, McCabe heard a boat engine. His brother and several friends, on their way to Catalina to retrace his steps, spotted him in the water. A friend jumped in the water at 2:15 p.m. and pulled McCabe out. "We didn't say anything to each other," he said. "We just hugged. I was conscious but not in very good shape."

As McCabe fought back tears throughout his emotionally charged news conference, he admitted that he had been thinking twice about the yacht project ever since his niece had given him a book by C.S. Lewis on the Christian faith. Reading the book by Lewis had led him to read through the New Testament, McCabe admitted,  "for the first time in my life."

"It is a mistake for man to put his emphasis on the things of this world, because those things are going to be gone and not available to him if he dies, and he should put his stores in heaven," McCabe observed. "He should get his pride under control, his ego under control - a huge issue my entire life. I think I needed a wake-up call," McCabe confessed. 

What might be God's wake-up call in our own lives?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow