An 86-Year-Old Sailed Off With His Dog for the South Pacific — Then No One Heard a Word From Them for Two Months

The plane found him first.

On the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 27, a Coast Guard C-27 Spartan from Air Station Sacramento crossed a lonely stretch of the Pacific roughly 460 miles off San Diego and picked out a single sailboat below. Its sails were damaged. It was drifting. On board were an 86-year-old man and his dog.

No one on land had heard a word from him since Aug. 20.

He had sailed out of Astoria, Oregon, in August aboard a boat called Willow Wind, bound for Pago Pago, American Samoa — a voyage of roughly 5,000 miles. A trip like that usually takes somewhere between four and seven weeks, the New York Post reported, citing the Maritime Safety Information website. By the time that plane passed overhead, he had been silent for more than nine weeks. And he was still off the coast of California.

Getting him home would take two more days, a cargo ship, a helicopter and a hospital. Getting anyone to look for him in the first place took a neighbor.

Nine Weeks Without a Word

The first sign of trouble didn’t come from the sea. It came from shore.

On Saturday, Oct. 24, Coast Guard Pacific Area watchstanders received a report that the mariner aboard Willow Wind was overdue, according to the Coast Guard. Friends and family had not heard from him since Aug. 20, but he wasn’t reported missing until late October, the Daily Mail reported.

The man who says he made that call is his neighbor, Randy Enders.

“This is my neighbor. I reported him missing to the Coast Guard and he was located three days later,” Enders wrote on Facebook, according to the Daily Mail.

But a report alone can’t find a small boat on an ocean that big. Searchers needed a signal.

Then the Beacon Went Off

On the afternoon of Tuesday, Oct. 27, the Coast Guard’s Rescue Coordination Center in Alameda, California, received an alert from an emergency position-indicating radio beacon — an EPIRB — registered to Willow Wind. When activated, these devices send a distress signal by satellite so rescuers can pinpoint a vessel in trouble.

After more than two months of silence, the boat was finally calling for help.

Watchstanders launched the Spartan aircrew out of Sacramento, diverted an HC-130 Hercules aircrew and the Coast Guard cutter Robert Ward, and asked nearby ships to help, the Coast Guard said. That same evening, the Spartan crew located Willow Wind about 460 miles off San Diego.

Finding him, though, turned out to be the easy part.

14 Hours Alongside a Ship He Couldn’t Board

The merchant vessel Grand Orion answered the call and arrived on scene at about 3:20 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 28. Help was right there — and still out of reach. The seas were too rough to safely bring the man aboard, according to the Coast Guard.

So the crew waited.

At 5:36 p.m., more than 14 hours after the cargo ship arrived, the Grand Orion crew finally pulled the 86-year-old and his dog off the sailboat. A photo released by the Coast Guard shows crew members in orange gear on the little sailboat as it sits pressed against the cargo ship’s towering hull, a blue tarp stretched over its cockpit and white sailcloth heaped across its deck.

Willow Wind, with its damaged sails, was left adrift.

The next morning, Thursday, Oct. 29, a Coast Guard Air Station San Diego MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew hoisted the man and his dog from the Grand Orion about 170 miles west of Ventura, California, and flew them both to Coast Guard Sector San Diego. Emergency medical personnel took him to Scripps Mercy Hospital.

“When emergency medical personnel were able to evaluate the mariner, he was weak and had difficulty walking, but no major injuries,” the Coast Guard told The California Post, according to the New York Post.

His dog made it home with him.

By the time they were found, the pair had traveled more than 1,000 nautical miles during their ordeal, the Post reported, citing the ship-tracking service SeaRoutesNav.

The Name the Coast Guard Didn’t Share

The Coast Guard has not released the sailor’s name or his dog’s. But a fundraising page set up by Enders identifies them as Harry Blodgett and his dog, Sasha, according to the Daily Mail.

And that page tells a part of the story the official reports don’t.

“They endured two months at sea after their boat became disabled. This experience left them with both physical and emotional scars,” Enders wrote, the Daily Mail reported.

The rescue saved their lives. It couldn’t save everything else.

“Sadly, their boat and everything on it have been lost forever,” Enders wrote. “Now they’re trying to start over without permanent housing and with very limited income.”

The Coast Guard, for its part, praised the strangers who made the ending possible — the civilian crew of a cargo ship who stayed alongside an 86-year-old and his dog through more than 14 hours of rough seas.

“We are grateful to the merchant mariners and Coast Guard crews whose coordinated efforts brought this search to a successful conclusion,” said Cmdr. Jason Nguyen, chief of the Coast Guard Southwest District command center.

Nguyen also pointed to the lesson every boater can take from it. “This case highlights the importance of carrying emergency communication equipment and creating a float plan so someone ashore knows your voyage plans,” he said.

In this case, someone ashore did know. A neighbor noticed the silence. A beacon did the rest.

Back in August, an 86-year-old man sailed out of Oregon with a boat, a dog and a destination 5,000 miles away.

He came home with the dog.