Couple thanks father-son fishing team for rescuing them from rip current

A Bradenton couple wants to thank a father-and-son fishing duo who may have just saved their lives. But they never got the Good Samaritans’ last name.

Paula and Tom Ney regularly anchor off Egmont Key, where Tom fishes and Paula combs the shore for shells.

So Monday’s excursion wasn’t out of the ordinary. And when Paula got out of her husband’s fishing boat, she thought she had her feet planted firmly in the sand below the water.

Tom noticed his wife was moving away from their boat, which was anchored just 20 to 30 feet off Egmont Key.

Suddenly, Paula was swept away. She had been caught in a rip current.

“She’s short, but she said she felt the sand,” Tom told the Herald a day later. “But within a few seconds, the current started taking her.

“So I just dropped the line and jumped in and swam to her,” he recalled. “I told her to hold on to my shirt and kick. I tried to swim with my arms and legs, trying to swim toward the boat, but we were making no headway.”

He, too, had been caught in the riptide.

That’s when two men on a fishing boat slowly approached the couple, who had been fighting the current for about a minute. The fishermen pulled their boat up close to Tom and Paula, threw them a floatation device and instructed them to swim toward the back of the fishing boat to the ladder.

Paula and Tom were helped aboard and met Mark and Daniel, who introduced themselves as father and son. The Neys were escorted safely back to their own boat, but they never learned the last name of the team that saved them.

“I thank them for saving our lives and coming to our assistance. The first rule of boat safety is if you see someone in trouble, go to them and see if you can help and they did that and I thank them,” Tom said.

Looking back on the incident, Tom said they’ll be more cautious about making sure their feet are definitely in the sand and wearing floatation devices until they’re safely on shore.

The incident comes just days after Panama City beachgoers formed a human chain to save a family pulled out to sea in a riptide.

Manatee County officials advise to always swim near a lifeguard and if you find yourself caught in a rip current, stay calm and swim parallel to the shore and out of the current before heading toward shore.

The incident hasn’t frightened the Neys about going back out on the water. Right after they returned to their boat, they went further downshore to ensure they were away from the current.

“If Mark and Daniel weren’t there, geez, I don’t know what we would have done,” Tom said.

This story was originally published July 12, 2017 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Couple thanks father-son fishing team for rescuing them from rip current."