SAN DIEGO — It was the boat trip of a lifetime for a trio of San Diegans until things went wrong, leaving them stranded at sea off the coast of Mexico.
On October 25, a three-person crew from San Diego was hired to bring a yacht down to its owner in Cabo San Lucas for the Bisbee's fishing tournament.
"Vibes were super good coming into this tournament. The first day we caught a marlin, so expectations were going very well," said Captain Kody Kessell, who was joined by crewmates, James Fisher and Jered Tippit, also boat captains.
Even though they didn't win the tournament, they had a great time, but things worsened when two days into their long journey back to San Diego, crew member Tippit saw smoke billowing from the engine room.
"There was too much smoke," said Kessell. "Jered couldn't breathe. He couldn't see."
Kessell turned off the engines and pulled the fire suppression switch, but the smoke grew thicker and the heat became hotter.
The diesel generator in the engine room had run away and there was no way to stop it.
"The noise was unbelievable. The smoke was unbelievable," said Kessell.
"It was putting out more power than it could handle, and there was no stopping it. So it was pretty helpless," Kessell continued.
Within a handful of minutes, half the boat was engulfed in flames. The flames blocked the crew from deploying the life-raft or the small dinghy. Left without options, the three men scrambled off the boat onto a one-person kayak.
Kessell, who was injured, sat in the kayak while Fisher and Tippit hung off the ends, floating along with the kayak.
They prepared a bag full of food and water but left the bag of provisions behind during the mad dash to get off the yacht.
"We were afraid of an explosion, so we swam away from the boat," said Kessell. "The flames were probably 100 feet high."
The men were just north of Mag Bay, about 60 miles from land, without food or water.
"Scary," said Kessell. "We were in the middle of nowhere."
After an hour in the water as the men watched the yacht burn, the sun had already set beneath the horizon, and darkness was setting in.
Just as the situation was becoming more hopeless, the crew of a commercial fishing boat, the 'Progresso 1,' saw the smoke and flames. The crew cut their fishing lines, leaving behind thousands of dollars worth of fishing equipment, and headed toward the American crew stranded at sea.
“They threw us a life ring. We got on their boat and immediately, they gave us food. They gave us water. They gave us clothes,” said Kessell. “They saved our lives. Without these guys, we would’ve been in the water overnight with no food, no water, and no provisions. It was windy. The swells were high. They saved us.”
Kessell and crew had lost everything. They had no money, no identification. Captain Alex of the ‘Progresso 1’ offered the cash he had on hand, which was a hundred pesos, and he gave them his personal debit card to make sure they’d have enough money to travel back across the border to San Diego.
“A complete and total stranger that he just picked up in the middle of the ocean,” said Kessell. “He gave every penny that he had to make sure that we got home safe.”
Kessell says you can never know when it’s going to be your time, but he’s glad this wasn’t his.
“I’m looking at my daughter here behind the camera and I’m thinking about my son back at home and my friends and my family,” said Kessell. “Without these guys, there was no guarantee that we would’ve made it back to our family and that’s not a price you can put on something.”
The Mexican fishing crew spent lots of fuel to bring the San Diegan trio back to safety. In order to repay the ‘Progresso 1’ crew for their losses in fuel and fishing equipment, Captain Kessell and friends have raised nearly $4,000 dollars on a gofundme.
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