Man Spends Four Hours in Cape May Waters After Falling Overboard

It was a miracle.

A 45-year old man was thrown overboard more than 40 miles off the coast of Cape May.  His friend was driving the boat with little experience and wasn't sure how to maneuver the boat around to save him.  The rain was coming down hard and the wind gusts were up to 45 mph.  Also, all of this took place at night.

So our scared friend stayed in the water, waiting to be rescued, for four hours!  The Coast Guard received a distress call and set out to look for him.  They eventually did find him, and flew him to a nearby hospital.  Amazingly, nobody was hurt.

Update:  The man who fell overboard Sunday night was Damian Sexton of Williamstown.  He told The Press of Atlantic City, 'We were heading to the Wilmington Canyon 75 miles offshore. There was supposed to be a big bigeye bite at night. We knew it would be nasty that night but the weather was supposed to be nice the next day.'

Sexton apparently went looking for some safety gear to show his friend along for the trip, Seas were steady at four to six feet with occasional eight-foot waves. He added that there were three things that kept him swimming for four hours:

'I was thinking, I can’t stop swimming, I have a 10-year-old and an 11-year-old, and a wife. That’s what kept me going. I swam in the middle of the night, in a thunderstorm, with great waves.'  With the exception of the occasional lightning, the sea was pitch black dark.  Sexton had no life vest or floating device.  The Coast Guard described the search like 'looking for a needle in a haystack in the open ocean.'  Sexton eventually found the Sea Robin.  He swam toward it, and according to GPS calculations, he swam approximately ten miles.

Aircraft managed to spot Sexton as well, here is footage of the amazing rescue: