Alone in the shark-filled sea / By Peter Michelmore

Alone in the shark-filled sea / By Peter Michelmore

“The downed airman prepared for battle, his only weapons a leaky life-jacket and a desperate resolve”

            An hour into his planned 65-minute flight from Bahamas in December 1986, Walter Wyatt, alone in his twin-engined Beechcraft, peered anxiously through the rain for a glimpse of Miami. In Nassau thieves had looted his navigational equipment, and Wyatt, 37, an airline flight engineer, was flying home to Florida with only one compass and a hand-held radio to guide him.

            After he had passed Andros Island, the skies blackened and the compass needle kept gyrating. Fearing it had led him off his westerly course, Wyatt looked for some landmark. At 1,100 meters flying below the overcast, he spotted waves crashing over rocks, which he guessed were part of the chain leading to Bimini. He followed them north, but Bimini was nowhere in sight. He had not the faintest idea where he was.

            SOS alert.

            Wyatt flicked on his radio. “Mayday, mayday,” he called. A Miami-bound Air Jamaica jetliner answered and relayed his call to the US coastguard. A Falcon search jet responded at once but, confused by another distress signal and hampered by thunderstorms, took nearly an hour to locate Wyatt.

            By the time Wyatt saw the white-and-orange jet drop out of the clouds, his right engine was sputtering and night was approaching. “We’ll get you down,” assured Falcon commander Lieutenant Steven Blankenship. There was an emergency landing strip on Cay Sal he said, and signaled Wyatt to follow.

            “Hang on, Walter,” said Blankenship as they swooped low over the white-capped sea. “Ten kilometers and you’ll be there.”

            Suddenly Wyatt’s right engine coughed its last, then the left fuel tank ran dry, killing the other motor. The aircraft angled for the water. Lowering full flaps to cut speed, Wyatt cried, “I’m going in!”

            Blankenship, aghast, saw the Beechcraft’s lights hit the sea, then vanish. Banking, he made a low run over the spot. There was nothing.

            An Air Force C-130 transport in the area dropped a parachute flare. But in four more passes, the Falcon crew saw no flares, no life raft and heard no emergency transmission. They felt certain Wyatt was dead. Co-pilot Mike Flaherty tapped the fuel gauge. The needle was close to empty. At 6pm, they turned for Key West, Florida. “We did all we could,” said Blankenship dismally. “We’ll fuel up and come again.”

            Wyatt felt his forehead strike the instrument panel. The plane bounced, then slammed back into the sea. Wyatt snatched two flares and scrambled on to a wing. Pulling the tags to inflate his life jacket, he saw the lights of the coastguard jet coming at him. He struck the ignition cap of one flare. It fizzled. The other crumpled in his hands.

            He felt the wing sinking under his feet, the nose pitching down. Within seconds, the plane was gone, and he was adrift in two-meter seas.

            Wyatt had taken sea-survival training and knew he should conserve energy. But after 30 minutes he was shivering and his legs were stiff with cramps. Hidden in the waves, he knew he would be all but invisible to searchers. So he began swimming in what he thought was the direction of Cay Sal.

            Violent squalls churned the seas, and within another hour he was disoriented, his hope fast draining away. The left chamber of his life-jacket was softening; air bubbled from a leak at the seams of the inflation tube. Then the tube broke loose and the chamber collapsed. He re-inflated it by blowing into the hole where the tube had been, and used his finger as a seal.

            Wyatt rode the chilling waves as best he could. Blood dripped from his forehead; he was leaving a scent for man-eating sharks. But he knew he must fight to stay alive; to surrender would be suicide. If this is my final day, God, he prayed, I ask you to forgive my sins.

            “ I love you.”

            Treading water, he methodically prepared his life-jacket to carry his last wishes to his loved ones. He removed an airline identity badge from his shirt and scratched on it with his watch-strap: “Trish the house.” He hoped a finder would decipher the will; he was leaving his house in Florida, to his girl-friend, Trisha Lansdale.

            On the other side he etched: “143 MDJWT.” The numbers were a code he used for “ I love you,” the letters for Mom, Dad, daughter Jennifer, 12, son Walter, 10, and Trisha. Wyatt was divorced; the children lived with their mother in Tennessee.

            He secured the badge to the life-jacket and struggled on. He read his watch: 8pm. I can make it to 10, he told himself.

            Just before the deadline, he felt the bump of a hard, moving body against his feet. A shark!....

            He waited, flesh creeping. They’ve found me, he thought. They’ll be back.

            At 10, he set midnight as his new survival goal, but the life-jacket’s right chamber was leaking now. When its inflation tube also came away, Wyatt re-inflated the chamber by mouth and put his other index finger over the hole, fighting to keep his head above water.

            Silent prayer.

            He rolled on to his back and let the rain-water wash over his swollen tongue and salt-burned eyes. When the clouds parted briefly, he saw stars spinning in the heavens. One star seemed to separated from the others and dart towards him. Maybe it’s coming to take me where I have to go, he thought. Please, God, take my life swiftly.

            In the sky to the west, Lieutenant Blankenship fought to hold his jet steady on course for Cay Sal. He had replenish his fuel supply in Key West and was returning, accompanied by a Navy helicopter, which would spotlight the search area. But visibility had fallen to near zero, with thunder and lightning and a deluge of rain. Continuing would jeopardize both aircraft and flight crews. He signaled the helicopter and turned back. They would search in the morning.

            Down in the sea, the weary swimmer imagined dawn skies filled with aircraft looking for him. When midnight passed, he resolved to last until daylight.  

            Then a blow on his feet sent him into panic. Another shark! Instinctively, he kicked at the intruder and pulled his hands away from the jacket. Water poured into the holes. Down he went—a meter and a half—tearing at the jacket until he was free of it.

            Stop! His mind commanded. Get your head together! Now! as the life-jacket sank deeper, he made a desperate lunge and felt his fingers close on the rubbery fabric.

            Resurfacing, he held the limp jacket in one hand, then took a gulp of air and turned his face into the water, his arms outstretched. He gave a scissor kick to propel himself forward, raised his head, exhaled, inhaled, and repeated the float-and-kick sequence. He kept it up for the better part of an hour.

            Afterwards, feeling calmed, he blew air back into the chambers of the life-jacket and slid his body on top of it. Timing the rush of the waves, he surfed onwards. I’ll make it to dawn, he thought.

            Closing in

            A flicker of hope stirred as a red speck of sun showed on the horizon, then climbed into the overcast. He looked for planes, but there was nothing.

            He lowered his gaze to the ocean. Directly in front of him, a dorsal fin cut through a wave. There was a thump on his left elbow. He let out a yelp and twisted away as the yellow-grey hide of a second shark slid by. The sharks were there in a pack, sizing him up.

            Wyatt rolled on to his back. In the murky blue wall of a wave he saw a big bull shark coming at him. Abruptly, it dived, then charged upwards at his legs. Wyatt drew up a leg and slammed the heel of his tennis shoe down between the shark’s eyes. It shot away, surfaced six meters to the side and began circling. Remora suckerfish were clinging all over its hide. “ I’m not ready to die yet, shark,” he called out.

            Two more bulls swept in. both spun away from his frantic kicks. Later, a hammerhead was almost too swift for him. Wyatt’s foot missed the ugly snout but crunched the fin, and the shark veered off.

            Then Wyatt saw the metallic blue tail of a blue pointer, break the water. That’s one of those 150-kilometer-per-hour sharks, he warned himself. Tensing for a lightning strike, he watched the shark thrust its head out of a wave. The predator’s expressionless eyes were looking directly into his. In a flash, it was gone.

            Wyatt felt sapped of energy. The hunters would sense his weakness, he realized. Once he allowed that first bite, the pack would come in a frenzy.

            The distant roar of an aircraft brought his eyes left. He spotted a coastguard jet, then watched it fade from sight. In minutes, though, it reappeared—flying a back-and-forth search.

            “I’m alive!”

            When the plane had closed to within a kilometer, he wave the orange life-jacket. The plane came nearer and then was overhead. Waving frantically, he arched his body out of the water. “Why don’t they see me?” he cried.

            In the plane, Blankenship was looking almost straight down, hoping to spot the Beechcraft’s wreckage. Suddenly his brain told him that for an instant he’d seen a man, half-buried in the swells, waving a life-jacket. He hit a computer button to fix the position, and said, “Hey, there’s a guy in the water!” He quickly radioed the coastguard cutter Cape York, 12 minutes away.

            Mike Flaherty dropped a smoke canister to guide the cutter and saw Wyatt swimming for it. Close behind him was a huge dark shadow. Blankenship urgently radioed, “Get moving, cutter! There’s a shark targeting this guy!”

            Wyatt had eyes only for the silver glint of the canister. But why hadn’t they dropped a life raft? Minutes later, he had the answer. A sleek white boat was knifing towards him through the waves.

            As the Cape York came abreast, a collapsible ladder snaked over the side. Wyatt caught a bottom rung and hung on, unable to climb.

            “ Hey, throw the jacket away,” a voice shouted as two men helped him up.

            “No way,” Wyatt replied in a croak. “It goes where I go.”

            Over the rail he came, eyes swollen, body shaking, and fell to his knees to kiss the deck. It was 9am. He had been swimming for more than 15 hours.

            Circling above, Flaherty slapped his commander on the back. Blankenship grinned widely. “This makes it all worthwhile,” he said.

            Later that day, after Wyatt was examined at a hospital, his parents drove him home where he sat for hours with Trisha. “I can’t believe I’m alive!” he said over and over again. He fell asleep, with Trisha holding his hands, and the life-jacket on the couch by his side.

“The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose”                                                            -Hada Bejar