Boater leaps in water to rescue 3 stranded on sinking houseboat, Florida video shows
Bystanders helped rescue a group of people who became stranded when their houseboat started sinking in a Florida marina, video shows.
Video shared on Facebook by Lyndsay Shaw shows a small pink houseboat floating in increasingly rough waves off of Panama City at around 10:15 a.m. June 16.
A second video then shows the houseboat capsized in the waves and starting to sink. A white boat pulls up beside it, and a man climbs onto the edge before jumping into the water and scrambling onto the side of the houseboat.
A few seconds later, debris can be seen blowing out of the houseboat and across the surface of the water, and people can be seen floating nearby. They float toward a second boat with three men on board, one of whom appears to start to hand them life jackets.
One of the men on that boat, Matt Gillis, posted a video on TikTok showing the moments before the weather turned bad. The last few seconds of the video show their boat approaching the houseboat and one of the men on board starting to throw a life jacket to people in the water.
“Long story short, we’re thankful God put us there at the right time,” the caption says. “I beat the storm to the boat ramp but saw people in need and made the decision to go back out and help, everyone made it out alive.”
Gillis did not respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.
Travis Brady, one of the other men who was on the boat, told WJHG that he and two of his friends had been fishing for red snapper in the Panama City Marina when the weather started to worsen and the waves grew to 5 or 6 feet.
He told the outlet that altogether three people from the houseboat and another person from a nearby pontoon boat were rescued. He said he didn’t know the man who jumped into the water to help the people on the houseboat.
“It restores your faith in humanity,” he told the outlet. “Makes you really reflect on the things that are really important in life. I’m going to try and not get emotional.”
Brady could not be reached for comment.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard told McClatchy News that rescuers responded to a call that morning to help save nine people from a capsized pontoon boat nearby. By the time the agency responded to the houseboat, the Good Samaritans had already rescued everyone onboard, he said.
Panama City is located on the Florida Panhandle, about 100 miles west of Tallahassee.