Two Teens Lost at Sea for 7 Days Were ‘So Hungry’ They Ate 100 Jellyfish, Were ‘Clinging to Each Other’ for Warmth

It started out as an ordinary Sunday for 15-year-old Troy Driscoll and his 17-year-old best friend, Josh Long. The two high schoolers from North Charleston, S.C., took their 15-foot boat out for what they thought would be a simple day of fishing on April 24, 2005.

But the ocean had other plans. Within minutes, powerful riptides pulled their small boat away from shore — so far and so fast that it would be days before anyone knew what had happened to them.

Speaking in May 2005, Josh remembered, “We were trying to put the boat between the beach and a sandbar, but we hadn’t been out 20 minutes when the riptide grabbed us and dragged us out.”

They attempted to drop anchor, but it never caught. The current kept pulling them farther into open water.

“Hours went by,” Josh said. “We tried waving people down, but no one saw us. The last thing I remember seeing were the towers on shore that guide the cargo ships. Once it got dark, we couldn’t see anything. By the next morning, there was no land at all. All we could do was pray.”

Josh’s cell phone was back in his truck at the dock, and the boat had no radio or emergency gear. With no way to call home, their families grew increasingly frantic. By 10 p.m., their parents contacted the Coast Guard.

Search crews launched boats, helicopters and planes, with help from private boaters scanning the water.

Still, after nearly three days with no trace of the boys, hope began to fade. The mission quietly shifted from rescue to recovery, and their parents braced for the worst.

Out on the drifting boat, however, Troy and Josh were still alive — but battling exhaustion, hunger, dehydration and exposure.

They were “soaking wet, clinging to each other, trying to keep warm,” Josh recalled. Sleep was nearly impossible.

Daytime brought a different kind of torment. “During the day it got so hot, we took a couple of dips to cool off. But then the sharks came around, and we didn’t go in the water anymore,” Troy said.

They drifted so far from shore that the ocean water turned a clear, almost tropical blue. It looked, Josh said, like “blue Gatorade” — cold, clean and tempting.

“Troy begged me, ‘Please, let me drink just a little.’ I told him, ‘If you drink it, you’ll die,’ ” Josh said.

When a light drizzle finally came, they tried desperately to drink it. “I had my mouth wide open to catch the drops, but it never rained hard enough,” Josh remembered. “I started licking the water off the deck.”

As days passed, the lack of food and water pushed them toward delirium.

Troy recalled one moment when Josh woke up disoriented and started shouting that they were at a store and needed to buy Mountain Dew. “I was like, ‘Bro, we’re in the middle of the ocean. There’s no Mountain Dew,’ ” Troy said.

Desperation drove them to extreme measures. “I was so hungry I ate a jellyfish and waited overnight to see if it would kill me. It didn’t,” Troy said. “They’re slimy, gushy things, but I ate about 100 of them.”

Josh added, “Troy was so hungry he wanted to cut off a finger and eat it. At one point, he said, ‘Please, help me get out of here or kill me.’ I told him, ‘I can’t do that.’ ”

Their ordeal finally ended seven days after they’d left shore. On Saturday, April 30, 2005, two fishermen spotted a tiny boat drifting roughly 111 miles from where the boys had launched — about seven miles off Cape Fear.

Seventy-year-old fisherman Ben Degutis recalled, “At first, I couldn’t tell what it was. As we got closer, I saw people waving, and holy mackerel — it was two young guys in this little boat. One of them was yelling, ‘Thank God!’”

The teens were rushed to the hospital. Josh had lost about 30 pounds. Troy needed three days of treatment for second-degree burns on his face and feet from the relentless sun.

For Troy’s father, seeing his son again felt like a second chance at life. Being reunited, he said, “was like him being born all over again. The joy in my heart was that huge.”

While they were stranded, Troy and Josh had promised each other that if they survived, they’d celebrate with the biggest ice cream sundae they could imagine.

“Out there, we dreamed about the ultimate sundae, the biggest one you could think of,” Josh said. “Troy and I are going to meet at an ice cream place and have that sundae.”