Coast Guard rescues 2 people, dog near Jensen Beach

By Ari Hait

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    FORT PIERCE, Florida (WPBF) — Louis Trout celebrated his 65th birthday on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, he almost lost his life.

The Coast Guard rescued Trout and his friend, Corey Cline, from the Atlantic Ocean late Wednesday night.

They also rescued Cline’s dog, Captain Roo.

“He runs a tight ship,” Cline said of his dog. “He’s always barking orders.”

Cline and Trout can joke now that their ordeal at sea is over.

“I was scared, but I knew I had to care of business, period,” Trout said.

Wednesday morning, Trout, Cline and Captain Roo left Fort Pierce on Trout’s boat, Paradise, for a day of fishing.

They were a few hours into the trip when everything went wrong.

“The alarms went off on the starboard side engine,” Cline said. “So, I alerted the captain automatically that the starboard engine was going off.”

Just like that, the engine quit.

The boat was taking on water.

Trout went downstairs to check it out.

“Opened the door to go inside and see what’s going on,” Trout said. “And I got hit by a wall of water coming out of the insides.”

“It slammed behind him,” Cline said. “And I heard him scream and scream and scream. He was trapped.”

Cline helped Trout to get free, but the boat was sinking fast.

“I grabbed the radio. I went, ‘Mayday, mayday, mayday,’” Cline said. “And the whole front end of the boat went under.”

“He had just enough time, about five seconds, to call the Coast Guard and say, ‘Mayday, mayday, mayday,’” Trout said. “He didn’t even have time to say we’re sinking.”

“I threw the radio out of my hand. And I watched the boat go down and all the lights turn out,” Cline said. “And then I was floating.”

The two men were able to grab onto a dinghy.

They found Caption Roo about 30 minutes later, clinging to a flotation device.

“We just put the dog in between us and cuddled up and tried to stay warm,” Trout said. “Because that’s all we could do at that point.”

However, there was one other thing Cline could do.

He still had his GPS in his hand.

He used the light on it to flash S.O.S.

That move combined with his mayday call allowed the Coast Guard to find the group.

They had been in the ocean for about four hours.

“Everybody kept their mind calm and did what had to be done,” Trout said. “Otherwise, we’d be dead, period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, both of us and the dog would probably be dead.”

Paradise wasn’t just Trout’s boat, it was also his home.

Everything he owned was lost when the boat sunk.

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