New Jersey men back home after 10 days stranded at sea

CAPE MAY, N.J. (PIX11) -- It started as a peaceful sailing trip. Two friends, Kevin Hyde and Joe Ditomasso, plus Ditomasso’s bichon poodle Minnie, set sail from Cape May, New Jersey, on Nov. 27, bound for Florida.

The trip was going as planned, until their boat encountered an unexpected storm off the coast of North Carolina on Dec. 3, marking their last known contact.

“A huge storm blew up and just blew us off course,” said Hyde, the ship’s owner. “I lost part of my mast, so I didn’t have the power to make the turn, so by that time we were just being pushed out to sea further and further.”

“I never heard wind so bad in my whole life,” said Ditomasso. “[It] sounded like the devil was out there.”

The men became stranded at sea for ten days with little food and no water or power.

“We didn’t have no more water left, nothing,” said Ditomasso. “We were sucking water out of the water lines.”

Luckily, a sharp-eyed crew member aboard the Silver Muna, a commercial vessel carrying gasoline from Amsterdam to New York, spotted their search light on Tuesday.

“It’s like finding a needle in a haystack in this situation,” said Hyde. “The waves were bigger than my boat, and the wind was severe. So it was amazing that they found it.”

It took three hours for the captain and crew of the Silver Muna to pull Hyde, Ditomasso and Minnie to safety.

“Finally, we rescued them with our crane [and] cargo net,” said Silver Muna Captain Neeraj Chaudhary.

“When I completed the rescue mission, I was actually crying, thanking my god,” said Chaudhary.

Hyde and Ditomasso are immeasurably grateful to Chaudhary and his crew.

"They put their lives on the line to save us,” said Hyde. “It was really quite an amazing feat.”