The ocean has endless opportunities for fun in the open water.
But it only takes one thing to go wrong to be in a pickle.
And Florida fishermen pulled off one daring rescue after paddleboarders were in a bad spot.
Teenage paddleboarders rescued after going missing
A pair of 16-year-old girls went missing while paddleboarding together in the Gulf of America.
Avery Bryan and Eva Aponte left Cedar Key, Florida in the early afternoon when they disappeared.
They did not come back when they were expected, and the Levy County Sheriff’s Office declared them missing at 4:00 pm.
It was all hands on deck to try and find them.
The Coast Guard, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials, Levy County Sheriff’s deputies, and volunteers began to search for them into the night without any luck.
Rescuers continued the search overnight when they got some unexpected help the next morning.
Russ Coon and some of his friends traveled from Orlando to the Gulf Coast for a fishing trip.
The fisherman got a call from one of his friends that morning who told them their plans were changing.
“He said, ‘Plans have changed,’” Coon told News 6. “We could still fish today, but we’re going to look for the girls that got lost.”
They hit the Gulf at 8:00 am with a hunch about where the girls could have ended up.
“I have no good explanation other than I wanted to go to this place called Turtle Bay and look,” Alex Jeffries, one of the fishermen, said. “(The girls) happened to be right there at the south point of Turtle Bay as soon as we got into it. We just happened to look over and see a paddle board.”
The fishermen found the stranded girls after about 30 minutes.
“We tried getting out there as soon as we could, and it paid off,” fisherman Will Pauling said.
They were in the right place at the right time.
Stranded paddleboarders survived on an abandoned island
Strong winds had blown the two teenagers off course to Atsena Otie Key, an abandoned island near Cedar Key.
The stranded girls survived for 16 hours in temperatures that dipped into the low 40s.
Coon and his buddies saw the girls after they climbed to the top of an abandoned oyster bar to wave them down.
Gary Bartell Jr. got them in an airboat from the fishermen’s small boat and took them back to shore.
“They had a great spirit for two young ladies that were stranded in the middle of the night, that had drifted 15 miles from their original location, especially in those high winds that we had last night,” Bartell Jr. stated.
Cedar Key Mayor Sue Colson said the Gulf’s beauty can cause people to lower their guard.
“We look so picture card perfect, and just slick and pretty,” Colson explained. “You just don’t feel in danger here, which is a great thing to feel by the way.”
The girls were taken to a local hospital with a mild case of hypothermia, dehydration, and cuts from the oyster shells that lined the beach at Atsena Otie Key.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
