MUSKEGO, Wis. — A Muskego man could be considered a hero after he rescued four sailors whose boat sank in Polynesia just over a week ago.
Geoff Stone was about 60 to 65 miles away when he got word of four sailors stranded on a liferaft. The four friends had been sailing when a whale struck their boat, rupturing the propeller.
Rick Rodriguez, the owner of the ship that sunk, spoke with the Today Show about the incident.
"The whole boat shook," Rodriguez said. "It sounded like something broke and we immediately looked to the side and we saw a really big whale bleeding."
The friends went into survival mode as soon as they felt the boat shake. Rodriguez started sending mayday calls and all the friends hopped into an inflatable raft.
Their boat sank within minutes, and Rodriguez sent messages to his brother and a friend who was sailing in the area, saying they were in trouble and needed help.
Rodriguez's friend posted on boat-watch Facebook groups and that's when Stone got involved.
"I think (we were) about 60 miles, 65 miles away when we realized that we were the closest boat," Stone, captain of the ship Rolling Stones, said on Today.
He was able to pinpoint exactly where the four stranded sailors were and began heading toward them.
"We saw them so far out and then we realized we were still like an hour-and-a-half away from them," Alex Stone, a sailor on the Rolling Stones, said. "But for that hour-and-a-half we were really, really excited."
About nine hours after their boat sank, the sailors were aboard Stone's boat.
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