The Ship Wreck Of San Leon

Last spring, two texas anglers experienced a fishing trip from hell—rogue waves, a capsized boat, lightning, even a heart attack. But a strong will to survive, and a lot of luck, kept them alive.

- JR Sullivan

LIGHTNING cracked the sky, washing the world white, and Raymond Jacik knew that his fishing buddy was dead. Through rain and hail, Jacik couldn’t see Michael Watkins, but the bolt had struck down right where he was stranded on a gas well, in Galveston Bay, 4 miles offshore. “Mike!” Jacik screamed. But in the winds and thundering waves, his cry was pointless.

Jacik had no time to mourn. Waves kept knocking him off the gas pipe where he stood, a few hundred yards away from Watkins. The rusted pipe gashed his bare feet, but it was the only thing keeping him out of the water. For hours, 6-foot waves slammed into him again and again, hurtling him into the booming sea. Once in the water, he’d flail wildly in the current, then fight to pull himself up again. “It felt like getting beat to death,” he recalls.

The storm, which had been raging for two hours, showed no sign of yielding. He prayed.

Monday, 8 A.M. Jacik and Watkins didn’t check the weather before leaving the marina in San Leon, Texas. The friends fished together several times a week, and the past few days had been nothing but clear April skies and calm seas. As they motored out on Watkins’s 20-foot center console, all they could think of were redfish and flounder, sharks and specks. “We had the whole day planned,” Jacik says.