A week after their boat went down early Mother’s Day in an abnormally choppy Jamaica Bay, the six boaters from Howard Beach and Long Island reflected on how their carefully-planned fishing trip in “calm,” “skating rink” seas became an ordeal none of them will ever forget.
“This is a very sensitive story for us,” explained Danielle Caliendo, who joined her boyfriend Anthony Blas and friends Anthony Dattolo, Lisa Shaver, Erik Halka and Jason Damone – all in their mid-20s – onboard Dattolo’s 25-foot boat around 9 p.m. on Saturday, May 9 for a night of fishing.
“We were joking around and saying that it was like summer. It was calm, it was like an ice skating rink,” recalled Caliendo, who added that “it wasn’t even windy” when Dattolo motored his Chaparral away from the dock toward the Marine Parkway Bridge.
According to the boaters, the weather report for the night looked clear and they heard no cause for alarm over the marine radio channel, which was turned on throughout the trip.
Over the next couple hours, the group landed four or five bluefish, but when the wind picked up at around 11:45 p.m., Dattolo told his friends it was time to head back. They packed up their fishing gear and set for shore.
But the trip back was hardly smooth sailing. In fact, Dattolo said the conditions as he piloted his craft back to the dock became “the worst I’ve seen in the bay.”
Five or 10 minutes into the return trip, water started coming into the boat, Caliendo recounted.
“At first it was just a couple of waves coming over the front of the boat. We were all soaked,” Caliendo said. “The waves just kept coming over more and more and more and the front of the boat started filling with water and sinking a little bit.”
It was there, in the sinking boat, Caliendo explained, that the six friends each assumed the role of hero, long before the NYPD’s helicopters buzzed overhead and illuminated them with their spotlights so that two local boat captains could swoop in for the rescue.
Dattolo remained at the helm until the boat’s power shut down and the radio shorted out, Caliendo said, steering in chilly water up to his waist, relaying the “Maydays” that would ultimately lead to the group’s survival. Shaver and Damone stayed on their cell phones with 9-1-1 operators, long after the radio dock was submerged, she said.
And when Halka, who was searching for additional lifejackets – the boat had 15 but many had floated away – and Caliendo each fell overboard as six-foot waves crested into the boat, Blas jumped in after them.
“We kept our heads,” recalled Caliendo, who did her part in staving off tragedy by managing to stick together in the water with Blas and Halka – who had at first drifted away – which made the trio easier to spot in the bobbing seas.
Dattolo agreed with Caliendo that each of the boaters played an integral role in the group’s survival.
“She’s 100 percent right,” Dattolo said. “It was a group effort. If it wasn’t for each and everyone one of us doing what they did we could have easily not made it.”
Naturally, the six boaters give most of the credit to their rescuers, party boat captain Dave Paris and Sea Tow service boat operator Captain Salvatore “Cody” Catapano.
“We heard the boat coming and we heard people screaming, ‘Swim!’” Caliendo recalled. “We swam!” she said with a laugh.
But swimming was just the beginning, as the six boaters, who had braced cold waters either in the boat or in the 64-degree bay for 15 to 20 minutes, had to then be yanked from the violent seas onto the rescuing craft.
“It was really, really rough, so we were like bouncing off the sides of the boat,” Caliendo said of Paris’ party vessel. She noted that by the time the two captains arrived on scene, Dattolo’s 25-footer was “barely visible” beneath the surface of the water and that Dattolo, Shaver and Damone were also bobbing in the bay at that point.
Once the six friends were out of the water – two ended up on Catapano’s boat and four on Paris’ – each of the respective crews began slowly warming them. Even the high schoolers onboard Paris’ party boat tried to pitch in, Caliendo said, calling everyone’s willingness to help “a breath of fresh air” in a place like New York City.
Ultimately, the six were brought to Maimonides and Coney Island Hospitals, where, after being treated for hypothermia – Dattolo had briefly become unresponsive upon being pulled from the water – all were released hours later.
“The next day was Mother’s Day and all six of us were at my house, together like always,” Caliendo said, noting that each spent time alone with Mom during the day.
Dattolo said that while his Chaparral is most likely “totaled,” he does have a smaller, 17-footer. But it only comfortably holds five people, he said. And, for a group of six best friends, that is a problem.
“We were close to begin with,” Caliendo explained. “What happened that night – the Captains came towards the end but the six of us share the same horrifying memories of that night. And I’m just glad we’re all here to talk about it.”
