'Still floating': Florida boaters ride out Hurricane Helene

Winds whipped over 100 mph. Waters threatened hundreds of miles of Florida coast. And Philip Tooke managed to punch out a terse but frantic message from his phone as he sat riding out Hurricane Helene − not in his house, but on his boat. 

“Lost power,” he wrote from St. Mark’s, 30 miles south of Tallahassee and 20 miles away from where Hurricane Helene hit the mouth of the Aucilla River. But, he says: "Still floating."

Tooke, 63, owner of a local seafood market, and his brother are spending the hurricane aboard their fishing boats. 

The pair are among the Floridians who took to the water for their survival. They did so despite evacuation orders ahead of the Category 4 hurricane and grisly warnings that foretold death for those who stayed.

Riding out the storm on his boat “is not going to be pleasant down here,” Tooke, a stone crab fisherman, told USA TODAY ahead of landfall. “If we don’t get that direct hit, we’ll be OK.”

Helene nearly hit the Tooke brothers dead on. The pair said they also rode out Hurricane Debby, a Category 1, aboard their boats in early August. They say they aren't prepared to compare the experience of the two storms because Helene “wasn’t over yet.”

Coast Guard officials strongly discourage people from staying aboard their vessels through a hurricane. But there are more than 1 million registered recreational vessels in Florida, according to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and Coast Guard officials acknowledge many owners stay on their boats.

“This is something that occurs often: Many people do live on their sailing vessels, and they don't have much elsewhere to go,” Petty Officer Eric Rodriguez told USA TODAY. “More often than not we have to wait for a storm to subside before sending our assets into a Category 4 storm.”

The brothers are not the only Floridians sticking to the water.

Ben Monaghan and Valerie Cristo, who had a boat crushed by Debby, told local radio they planned to ride out Helene aboard a sailboat at Gulfport Municipal Marina. 

Monaghan told WMNF in Florida that his boat collided with another vessel during the course of the hurricane and he had to be rescued by the fire department. 

Law enforcement in Florida is especially prepared to make water rescues, outfitting agencies with rescue boats and specially crafted “swamp buggies,” according to Lt. Todd Olmer, a public affairs officer for Sheriff Carmine Marceno at the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.

But once the storm reaches a certain intensity, no rescues can be made, Olmer warned. 

“The marine environment is a dangerous environment where waters can rise, wind and current dictate the day,” Olmer said. “And when you get in trouble on a boat during a storm, first responders cannot get to you in a timely manner due to the nature of Mother Nature always winning.” 

Olmer said the department generally had to wait to make rescues until after sustained winds died down to under 40 mph. Helene’s winds were more than three times that speed when it made landfall.

Olmer, a veteran of the Coast Guard in Florida, said the Gulf of Mexico is particularly treacherous during a storm compared with other bodies of water. 

“The Gulf is a different beast because the waves are taller and closer,” Olmer said, referring to the spacing between waves. “It’s like a super-chop.”

Rodriguez of the Coast Guard in Florida said the agency already was preparing to wait until morning, when it would send out MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters and a C-27 fixed-wing plane to scour the coast for signs of wreckage and people needing rescue.

Farther down the coast in Tampa Bay, a man named Jay also said he prepared to ride out the storm on the sailboat where he lives.

“Anything that happens was meant to be, it was all preordained,” Jay told News Nation. “If I wind up on land and my boat winds up crushed, then that just means I wasn’t meant to be on it.”