Troy Driscoll's Photos

Troy Driscoll and Josh Long had been drifting at sea, off the coast of South Carolina for five days. The sea became so calm, so flat, like a shallow lake without wind.  “I’ve never seen the ocean this calm, ever, in my whole life,” Troy said to his best friend. “I don’t know man, I think that’s telling me to pray over the boat.” And so Josh prayed, asking God to protect their tiny boat and for them to be rescued.

The boys were on a small sailboat, but had left the sail behind and had only taken two oars.  They had planned to go fishing off Sullivan’s Island, a beach near their homes in Charleston.  But they were caught in a current that swept them away from shore.  As they drifted farther from land, they realized they were in big trouble.  Without food, water or life jackets, they quickly grew frightened.  The mood was tense and when Josh began to curse after losing a fishing pole overboard, Troy shut him up.  “After that we kind of just started praying right off the bat because we new that this could become a very serious situation,” he remembers.

The boys prayed the Coast Guard would find them or that another boat would see them. They prayed to be back at home.  The sun burned Troy’s skin to a crisp.   Mako sharks circled the boat.  “Something told me that God wasn’t going to keep us out there suffering for so long, unless we survive,” Troy says.  Almost every second of every day, Troy prayed.  And when he wasn’t begging God for deliverance, he imagined the banana split that he wanted to taste before he died.  Delirious from lack of water, Josh grew convinced that there was Mountain Dew just beyond reach of the boat.

As night fell with each passing day, they prayed.  And when the sun broke on the horizon in the morning, they prayed some more.  It filled the time, and it gave Troy hope and courage too.  On the third night at sea, Troy saw glowing jelly-like creatures floating by the boat. Since they hadn’t caught a thing in days, Troy reached over and started to eat the gelatinous things.  He didn’t even care if they were poisonous. “If these kill me,” he thought, “that will be fine because I’ll go to Heaven and I’ll have a big old buffet.”

By the seventh day, Troy and josh were truly desperate.  Crying, weeping, and praying, they knew they were going to die.  Exhausted, delirious and barely able to function, Troy started to drink ocean water.  For days, he had avoided even a sip of the saltwater.  But now he couldn’t resist anymore.  He stuck his lips into the ocean water and slurped.  It tasted so good.  He and Josh curled up in the boat to try to sleep on last time.  That’s when they heard a motor. It was a boat coming straight for them.

The Renegade, a fishing boat, was barreling toward Troy and Josh. The boys were ecstatic and waved to the two men onboard.  One hoisted Troy out of the sailboat.  Troy says, “The first question I asked him was, ‘Man, do you believe in God?’ I was like, ‘Dude, there is a God and I believe you’re the angel.’”

Troy and Josh had drifted 111 miles and were just seven miles off the coast of Cape Fear, North Carolina when they were rescued.  The boys were dehydrated, sunburned, and exhausted. Just moments before being saved, Troy had given up hope.  He lay down in the boat, truly ready to die.  He believed he would go first because his best friend Josh had more body fat and therefore more reserves to draw upon to survive.  But the noise from the Renegade’s engine made him sit up one more time.  “I think they’re angels to this day,” Troy says of the men who rescued him.  A Mountain Dew would have been nice, but without his “faith and determination in God” and prayer, he never would have survived.  “If I didn’t have them with me,” he says, then I would have been shark bait.”