With a harbor seal by his side and the thoughts of his family on his mind, Scott Thompson endured hypothermia and swam to the safety of an oil platform.
“I’ve literally thought about it a hundred million times,” said Scott Thompson. “Like what if I fell off my boat and my boat was in gear.”All that time daydreaming finally came to fruition on a cold January night when Thompson was thrown off his old blue boat called Miss Grace, as he tried to clear his mind after the death of a close friend.
The fisherman immediately realized he couldn’t catch his boat, which was in gear, and drifted away further into the Santa Barbara Channel. Thompson, an experienced mariner knew that he was spending too much energy on swimming upright so he turned over on his back while he contemplated his next steps. That is when he saw the bright lights from an oil platform about two to three miles away and made the decision to swim.
He began to think about his family: his wife their two little girls and their older son and motivated himself to keep swimming. While the thought of his family motivated him to keep going, Thompson said that he would not have endured through the pain if it weren’t for a harbor seal swimming alongside him.“They always pop their head out of the water,” said Thompson.“That’s when I started thinking like ‘Wow, I’m getting closer,” he said. “I’m actually going to pull this off. And then [the seal] was gone.”
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