Swimmer Swept Out To Sea Found Off New York Coast After Treading Water For 5 Hours

A 63-year-old man was swept out to sea early Monday while swimming off the coast of Babylon, New York, but managed to tread water for five hours before being rescued, authorities said.

Dan Ho of Copiague was miraculously pulled from the water near Long Island after tying his T-shirt to a broken fishing pole he found and waving it in the air, the Suffolk County Police Department said in a statement Tuesday.

Two passing boaters, identified as Jim Hohorst and Michael Ross, spotted Ho and got him onto their boat, roughly 2.5 miles from where he first entered the water around 5 a.m. that morning.

“He was in shock and pretty incoherent at the time,” Hohorst, a former officer for the New York Fire Department’s marine bureau, told the local outlet Newsday .

Hohorst estimated that the water was around 68 degrees and said he believed that Ho “had maybe an hour left.”

“He was very hypothermic and said he had been drinking a lot of salt water,” Hohorst told Newsday.

After Hohorst and Ross called for help, local authorities met the men’s boat and picked up Ho, who was described as conscious and alert but unable to stand. He was treated for hypothermia and transported to a local hospital for further evaluation, police said.