{"id":3824,"date":"2012-07-21T02:06:14","date_gmt":"2012-07-21T05:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bwsailing.com\/news\/?p=757"},"modified":"2012-07-21T02:06:14","modified_gmt":"2012-07-21T05:06:14","slug":"rhode-island-boater-rescued-after-11-hours-in-the-water-with-no-lifejacket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/rhode-island-boater-rescued-after-11-hours-in-the-water-with-no-lifejacket\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhode Island Boater Rescued After 11 Hours in the Water With No Lifejacket"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Rhode Island man managed to tread water without a life vest for almost 11 hours after\"\"<\/a> falling off his boat Tuesday night July, 17.<\/p>\n

Joseph Gross was pulled from the water by Coast Guard rescuers just after 3:30 a.m. Wednesday about 3 miles south of Point Judith, Rhode Island.<\/p>\n

Gross had been fishing off Block Island and was working on the back deck of his 23-foot boat when a wave hit, knocking him overboard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI leaned off the side to catch a breeze a little bit, and when I did, I caught a queer wave,\u201d Gross told WBZ NewsRadio 1030 in an exclusive interview. \u201cI just lost my center of gravity over the rail, and I went just like that; no life jacket; happened in about a half second.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boat kept going, running aground on Green Hill Beach in South Kingston where witnesses called 911.<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched it sail away,\u201d Gross said. \u201cI was thinking I was pretty much a dead man at that point. It was probably at least an eight mile swim in each direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 51-year-old Gross didn\u2019t give up. The water was cold enough to cause hypothermia, so Gross knew he had to keep moving. He started to swim with the tide toward shore.<\/p>\n

The Coast Guard launched a massive search. Nine hours after that search began, rescuers spotted him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we went to go grab him and bring him on board, he just says \u2018Please help me, I don\u2019t have any strength, I\u2019m very weak. So, if you can grab me up, and put me up as fast as possible\u2019 And that\u2019s what we did,\u201d explained Petty Officer Chris DiGiovanni of the U.S. Coast Guard.<\/p>\n

Gross said they found him just in time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d have been a dead man if that boat had missed me. Psychologically I was crushed, physically I was already crushed,\u201d Gross said.<\/p>\n

He was taken to South County Hospital, where he was being treated for hypothermia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big, big feeling of accomplishment knowing that whenever you pull somebody out of the water and they\u2019re still alive, it\u2019s a great feeling to know that you helped somebody out,\u201d said Petty Officer Justin Wood of the U.S. Coast Guard. \u201cThis is what we do. This is what we train for; this is what we look for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what Gross was thinking during those hours alone in the dark ocean Gross said, \u201cdeath and resisting death. Simple as that,\u201d he said. \u201cI won. I won.\u201d<\/p>\n

And even after his near death experience, Gross says he\u2019ll be back on the water.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll probably be in Hudson Canyon next weekend, off of New York City, tuna fishing,\u201d he told WBZ-TV.<\/p>\n

But this time, he said he\u2019ll wear a life jacket.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of boston.cbslocal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Rhode Island man managed to tread water without a life vest for almost 11 hours after falling off his boat Tuesday night July, 17. Joseph […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruising-news","category-news-and-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}