Man lost at sea thought he would die

In hours before rescue, he labored to stay afloat and recited 23rd Psalm.A Newport Beach man who fell off his 60-foot powerboat into the ocean Thursday prayed and clung to life on a 2-by-4 before being rescued five hours later.

Craig McCabe, 59, was found shaking and hypothermic, his body temperature eight degrees below normal, when he was rescued by family and friends two miles off the Port of Los Angeles.

“Just when I was about to drown, my brother showed up,” McCabe said Friday.

He was hospitalized at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, where he was treated for hypothermia and several bumps and bruises.

McCabe was en route from Marina del Rey to Newport Beach aboard his yacht, Heather, when he lost balance while checking equipment at the back of the boat and fell overboard five miles offshore, said McCabe’s two daughters, Kelly and Katie McCabe.

“I wasn’t too worried to start with,” Craig McCabe said. “As things developed, about three times I thought I was going to die.”

For some reason, the boat took a 90-degree right turn after McCabe fell overboard; the boat was not on auto-pilot, said Katie McCabe.

Craig McCabe first grabbed hold of a floating balloon, which buoyed him -- until the balloon deflated.

“When it deflated ... I was reciting the 23rd Psalm and I was drowning,” McCabe said. “About the 10th time I recited it, I bobbed my head up and saw a 2-by-4 next to me, and that saved my life.”

Katie McCabe said her father tried to get the attention of fishermen and a passing freight ship, but neither stopped.

At one point he spotted a navigation buoy. McCabe said he swam about half a mile and tried to climb onto the buoy, but was thwarted by a group of aggressive sea lions.

When McCabe’s boat turned up with its engine running and no one aboard near Catalina Island’s Avalon Harbor, a coast guard watch commander notified McCabe’s brother, Lance McCabe, officials said.

Lance McCabe gathered a search party. They mapped out a possible location and set out to find his brother. At about 2:15 p.m., the search party spotted McCabe near a buoy about two miles from the Port of Los Angeles, said Lt. Tony Migliorini, spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard.

A lifelong Newport resident who grew up in Corona del Mar, McCabe had been living aboard his powerboat in a Catalina Island harbor for the last four months, he said. He was headed for a Balboa boatyard for some boat repairs when he fell overboard.

No one knows how or why the boat hit Catalina Island.

“If it hadn’t hit the island, nobody would have been notified, and nobody would have been sent out,” said Katie McCabe.

Craig McCabe’s daughters said they were “petrified” when they first heard the news that their father’s boat had arrived without him at Catalina.

“I thought that he had gotten knocked in the head and fallen off,” said Katie McCabe.

McCabe was released from the hospital Friday afternoon and went home with his two daughters.

“He’s fine,” said Katie McCabe. “Emotionally, he’s a very different man.”20060114it2ffbncMARK DUSTIN / DAILY PILOT(LA)Don Solsby of Irvine secures Heather, the boat owned by Craig McCabe, at the Balboa Boat Yard on Friday night.