Six rescued from boat Black Magic off Jersey Shore reunited with families

ATLANTIC CITY - Six men whose fishing boat, the Black Magic, had been lost at sea for nearly 48 hours were returned to the arms of their loved ones late Tuesday afternoon after the Coast Guard found them drifting about 120 miles off the New Jersey coast just before sunset Monday.

Nearly two dozen wives, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, and friends of the six waited at the Coast Guard station near the Frank S. Farley State Marina to greet the men as a cutter towed the disabled vessel to a dock. The group cheered, waved anxiously, and called to the men as they left the Black Magic to take a short ride on yet another Coast Guard vessel before they could safely disembark. The family members and friends, who said they had spent difficult hours fearing they would never see the men again, finally had the chance to greet each survivor with a very long hug.

"We were just so grateful to be found. It's a feeling you just can't believe," said James McDade, 26, the owner of the 32-foot Blackfin sportfishing boat, which apparently lost electrical power about 1 a.m. Sunday, just after the group had set up to fish for tuna in a popular deepwater area about 85 miles off the coast known as Toms Canyon. It is unclear what caused the power failure.

The men had left about 10:30 a.m. Saturday from the Tides End Marina in the Forked River section of Lacey Township, Ocean County, on what was supposed to be an overnight trip to a prime fishing area.

But 15 hours into the trip, about 100 miles from shore, the Black Magic experienced a "major electrical failure," according to Geoffrey McDade, 56, a diesel mechanic.

"I knew that we were dead in the water," the elder McDade said. "We used portable generators to try to operate our battery charges, but we couldn't get them to charge. By Sunday daylight, I knew we had a big problem."

Not knowing precisely what was happening at sea, Sharon McDade, whose husband and son were aboard the boat, alerted the Coast Guard about 6:40 p.m. Sunday that the Black Magic had failed to return to its slip at the marina after it had been due in that morning. It had been the couple's 28th wedding anniversary.

Also onboard the Black Magic were Bernie Otremsky of Haddon Township; Ed Silcox of Lower Southampton Township, Bucks County; Jerry Lewis of Hamilton Township; and Ray Somerville of Iselin.

James McDade, of Groton, Conn., a Navy machinist who had returned from a tour of duty in Iraq in April and bought the boat in Delaware a short time later, called the harrowing experience of being adrift on the ocean and unable to make contact with rescuers scarier than anything he had experienced in the Middle East.

"This was definitely worse, because in Iraq there is a chance something could happen," McDade said. "Out there, it was all just staring you in the face every minute that the boat kept drifting further and further out and we just started running out of more and more things."

At 1 a.m. Monday, the men on the boat - and their anxious families on land - saw a glimmer of hope when a Mayday call was correlated by the Coast Guard with the missing boaters. They had tried for hours to send a distress signal, with no success until then.

But by Monday evening, about 42 hours after they had lost power and were running very low on basic supplies such as water, food, and fuel, the men began contemplating their mortality - but individually. And as the sun began to set, their families were having similar feelings on land.

"We kept quiet about it, but we were all thinking it, that this was probably going to be the end," said Geoffrey McDade. "We took pictures of the most beautiful sunset we've ever seen yesterday and we just kept thinking, this could be our last."

Otremsky, a commercial sales engineer at Peirce-Phelps, a Philadelphia-based heating and air-conditioning distributor, said he began "seriously thinking about the end."

"I really had thoughts that I would never see them again," Otremsky said of his wife, Lisa, and daughters, Erin, Molly, and Colleen, who had come to the dock to welcome him home Tuesday. "The water was 65 degrees, so really, how long could you last out there? The boat had begun to take on water. I was preparing myself for how it was going to end. And the end didn't look good."

But then, just as the men were preparing to start up the boat's generator again so more water could be pumped off the boat, they heard the faint sound of what they believed to be a helicopter. They sent up one of their few remaining flares as it got closer. And then another, just before the helicopter signaled with its lights that it had spotted the boat.

"That was such a comforting feeling, that someone had found us," said Somerville, 55, a heavy-truck mechanic. "We had reached our lowest point. We were all contemplating the end. And then, salvation."

A Coast Guard cutter, slowed by a storm and rough seas, then spent more than 20 hours towing the boat and carrying the men to safety. After being reunited with their loved ones and meeting a gaggle of reporters, they were debriefed by the rescue agency. None had suffered any physical injuries during the ordeal, Coast Guard officials said.