“I’m thinking, ‘Man, this is not the way I thought I was going out,’” he said. “I’m thinking, ‘Man, this is not the way I thought I was going out.’” - Rick Lingon, 62, of Richmond He began growing cold at about 10:30 p.m., which he knew wasn’t good, given that people can die from hypothermia - even in summer waters. As he floated toward the wrong direction on the bay, he could see the boats looking for him miles south. The currents took him a mile and a half northwest from the boat. Though Rick Lingon had thought he could swim ashore, the tides were against him. But when he relayed the discovery to his mother from the boat, he said, “saying she was in hysterics is an understatement.” Your worst thoughts are running through your head.” Nick tried to stay positive. “Because he said he was gonna be with a boat, and he wasn’t. “My heart pretty much sank,” Nick Lingon said. But when they found the vessel at 10 p.m., it appeared abandoned. Nick Lingon told the officers that his father was with the overturned boat. They found Nick Lingon and Brooks holding onto the day marker pole. Freeman cut the engines back to neutral, quieting things down as they surveyed the water. “It’s constantly trying to determine where whatever we’re searching for - the search object - may have drifted to,” she said.Ībout 9:30 p.m., Virginia Marine Police Officer Kenneth Freeman was steering a 25-foot patrol boat near the New Point Comfort Split Channel #2-day marker when his partner heard shouting from the water. The Coast Guard plugged that into a modeling program to predict where the missing boaters might be. “We needed to look and find them fast, particularly because the sun was coming down on us at that point.”Įlfguinn said the rescue team had a picture of the missing boat provided by Molly Lingon, and good information about when the boat left and its probable direction. “I knew we would be in the thick of it,” she said. She coordinated with the Virginia Marine Police, the Mathews County Sheriff’s Office and the Abington Volunteer Fire and Rescue in Gloucester. She quickly went home and began the search and rescue coordination.Įlfguinn, chief of response for Sector Virginia, got a Coast Guard C-130 search plane from Elizabeth City, as well as boats from Coast Guard Station Milford Haven and elsewhere. Erica Elfguinn was with her family at a downtown Suffolk restaurant, finishing a Father’s Day dinner when she got the call. She called the Mathews County Sheriff at 7:15 p.m.Īt about 8 p.m., Coast Guard Cmdr. She got her binoculars, asked neighbors if they’d seen anything, and began pacing the beach. “So OK, ‘don’t think the worst, don’t think the worst,’”

But when the group hadn’t returned by 6:30 p.m., an hour after they left, she grew concerned.“Rick always says to me, ‘You always think the worst,’” she said. Rick’s wife, Molly Lingon, didn’t join in the sailing that day, staying ashore to read her book. “Well, that didn’t happen.”Ī shift in currents, he said, made the swim even more grueling. “I thought I’m gonna make it to shore, that’s guaranteed,’” he said, knowing he was in good shape and had a life jacket. So Lingon, an experienced boater who works in sales and marketing, decided to ditch the boat and swim. But when the sun started to go down, he said, he began to worry they couldn’t find him. Rick Lingon, meantime, worked to pull the catamaran toward shore, assuming Nick would soon be on the way with help. “I asked her if she would ever get on a sailboat again, and she said probably so.”

“I kept cracking jokes to try and make her laugh,” Nick said.

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