Steve Torpey

And it makes you go basically up and down.

And it's part of the pilot duties to manage the collective, the cyclic, which is the stick, and then the pedals.

And sharing controls is unusual, but we had to do it.

I was looking out to my right almost all night.

Captain Cleaver was looking forward at the waves that were sometimes...

Going above us.

You know, the smoke flares would actually rise above our helicopter.

And Captain would go, there's a big one coming.

And he would pull on the collective and initiate the climb to ensure we didn't, like, fly right into the front side of a wave.

And we were trying to hold 100 feet.

It just begs the question.

There's no measuring stick out there, but those waves sometimes were bigger than us.

It was.

And it was a learning experience for both Fred and I. I was moving the cyclic, the stick, more than I've ever moved it before in my life.

And I can remember seeing the rotors go up and down more than I've ever seen them.

I beat the hell out of the helicopter.

God, hours, five hours or so.

I don't know exactly when their boat capsized, but it was long enough for the boat to capsize for their emergency beacon to get set off that alerted the Coast Guard that told the air station to go launch and then have two helicopters come out.

It wasn't just that it was cold.

It was that they were in a washing machine.