Calvin Roman and Zachary Wade departed Saturday from shore for an extended fishing trip in their 30-foot boat. Early Monday morning, roughly 75 miles off the coast of Brunswick, Georgia, they were treading open water and clinging to a blue-and-white striped bean bag as their vessel disappeared beneath them.
The boat began rapidly taking on water while the two men were far from shore, according to The Maritime Executive. As the vessel sank, one of the boaters swam down into the rapidly submerging hull to retrieve the boat's emergency beacon. That underwater retrieval allowed the pair to activate a distress signal before the boat went under entirely.
With the vessel gone, Roman and Wade held onto the bean bag to stay afloat while they waited in the open ocean. The Coast Guard's Southeast District received the distress signal at about 0650 hours and launched a search-and-rescue effort involving multiple aircraft, per the same release.
A Fleet-Wide Response and a Textbook Beacon
Coast Guard Search-and-Rescue Response The scale of the response reflected how seriously the Coast Guard treats a confirmed distress signal at sea. The Coast Guard said the response involved multiple aircraft and Station Mayport.
That beacon's value depends on registration. Federal regulations under 47 CFR § 80.1061 require that all 406 MHz satellite EPIRBs be formally registered with NOAA's beacon registry, a system that links a distress signal directly to a vessel's description and its owner's emergency contacts, per the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. The registry can link a beacon signal to a vessel's description and its owner's emergency contacts.
Tanker Diverts Under Maritime Law to Pull Men From the Water
While aircraft searched, the Coast Guard's Southeast District contacted the Jones Act product tanker American Phoenix for assistance, and the ship arrived on scene and used its rescue boat to pull Roman and Wade from the water. The tanker's response was not voluntary in the loosest sense — under federal maritime law, 46 U.S.C. § 2304 requires vessel commanders to render assistance to anyone in danger of being lost at sea, provided they can do so without serious risk to their own ship or crew, according to the Legal Information Institute.
The American Phoenix itself is a study in contrasts against the 30-foot fishing boat it helped save. The 616-foot, 49,000-deadweight-ton tanker has a cargo capacity of 330,000 barrels and was built at BAE Systems in Alabama as the largest vessel built and launched in Alabama, according to VesselTracker ship records. Once the men were aboard the tanker, a Station Mayport rescue-boat crew met the American Phoenix about four miles off Mayport and brought Roman and Wade safely ashore. Neither man sustained serious injuries.
An Improvised Life Preserver With Precedent
An Improvised Life Preserver With Precedent The bean bag that kept Roman and Wade afloat is not without precedent in offshore rescue history. In a strikingly similar sinking off Key Largo, Florida in April 2022, five boaters whose 25-foot vessel sank in 30 seconds also survived by clinging to floating marine bean bags while awaiting rescue, according to safety equipment manufacturer ACR Electronics. In both cases, bean bags served as flotation in the water.
The waters off Brunswick are no stranger to Coast Guard rescues involving small vessels and nearby commercial traffic. In July 2024, Station Mayport's boat crew retrieved five boaters stranded atop a capsized 24-foot vessel 11 miles off the Florida coast, as CBS News reported at the time. The area's heavy commercial shipping density, driven by deep-draft tankers and cargo ships calling on Georgia ports, means large vessels like the American Phoenix are often within reach when smaller boats run into trouble.
Why Small Boats Face Outsized Risk
National data underscores just how dangerous a sudden sinking can be for those aboard smaller vessels. The Coast Guard's 2024 Recreational Boating Statistics report found that drowning accounted for 76 percent of all recreational boating deaths nationwide, with 87 percent of drowning victims not wearing a personal flotation device. Four out of every five drowning victims in 2024 were aboard vessels under 21 feet, though open motorboats up to 30 feet, like the one Roman and Wade were fishing from, face similar sudden flooding and capsizing risks far offshore, according to the National Safe Boating Council.
What caused the 30-foot boat to take on water so abruptly remains unknown, and it is unclear whether federal authorities will attempt to inspect or salvage the submerged hull. For now, Roman and Wade were brought safely ashore after activating their emergency beacon and clinging to a buoyant item.
