The captain, equipped with an emergency locator beacon, life jacket, and a cooler, survived a harrowing night in open waters battered by the hurricane's fierce winds and towering waves. The rescue took place approximately 30 miles off Longboat Key, with the overjoyed crew labeling the successful operation "a miracle."

Lieutenant Landon Klopfenstein, one of the Miami-based helicopter pilots involved in the mission, expressed his relief and excitement over the miraculous save. "We do a lot of searches for people in the water, so to have a success story like this is not as common as we'd like it," he said in a video shared by the Coast Guard. "We were all very, very excited. We couldn't believe it, honestly, that he was OK."

The situation began a day earlier as Hurricane Milton approached Florida's west coast. The captain was aboard the fishing boat named Capt. Dave, attempting to return to port after making early morning repairs when the vessel’s rudder failed. The Coast Guard received an alert in the early afternoon, just as conditions worsened dramatically, with tropical storm-force winds expected by 2 p.m.

Maintaining contact with the Coast Guard until around 6:45 p.m., the captain was instructed to don a life jacket and stay with the boat's emergency beacon. This was their last communication before Milton's powerful Category 3 forces made landfall. The next day, the helicopter crew was assigned a search pattern, guided by a physical description and dependent on mathematical calculations to optimize their limited resources and fuel.

Lieutenant Ian Logan recounted the crucial moment when they began detecting signals from their direction-finding equipment. Initially instructed to return to base as another helicopter was following a similar search pattern, they decided to trace the new signal. Klopfenstein shared how their rescue swimmer spotted an object in the water, which turned out to be the captain clinging to a fishing cooler.

The rescue swimmer was swiftly lowered into the water, and the boat captain was hoisted to safety around 1:30 p.m., 17 hours after Hurricane Milton had made landfall. Lieutenant Commander Dana Grady highlighted the extremity of the ordeal the man had endured, facing winds up to 90 mph and seas as high as 25 feet.

Once aboard the helicopter, the man was transported to Tampa General Hospital. Logan praised the team's cohesive effort, attributing the successful mission to their combined initiative and positive attitude. Klopfenstein emphasized the value of survival equipment, noting, "Survival equipment is priceless," while also acknowledging that having a sturdy cooler can be unexpectedly life-saving.