A Speck in the Sea: A Story of Survival and Rescue

by John Aldridge, Anthony Sosinski

Overview

The harrowing adventure-at-sea memoir recounting the heroic search-and-rescue mission for lost Montauk fisherman John Aldridge, which Daniel James Brown calls "A terrific read."

I am floating in the middle of the night, and nobody in the world even knows I am missing. Nobody is looking for me. You can't get more alone than that. You can't be more lost.

I've got too many people who love me. There's no way I'm dying like this.

In the dead of night on July 24, 2013, John Aldridge was thrown off the back of the Anna Mary while his fishing partner, Anthony Sosinski, slept below. As desperate hours ticked by, Sosinski, the families, the local fishing community, and the U.S. Coast Guard in three states mobilized in an unprecedented search effort that culminated in a rare and exhilarating success.

A tale of survival, perseverance, and community, A Speck in the Sea tells of one man's struggle to survive as friends and strangers work to bring him home. Aldridge's wrenching first-person account intertwines with the narrative of the massive, constantly evolving rescue operation designed to save him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781602863385
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	05/22/2018
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	359,794
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

John Aldridge and Anthony Sosinski co-own and operate the Anna Mary, a lobster boat, in the open ocean surrounding Montauk. Best friends for decades, Aldridge and Sosinski are seasoned sailors and fishermen.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Preface xi

Prologue 1

Chapter 1 Overboard 7

Chapter 2 Montauk Fishermen 21

Chapter 3 A Speck in the Sea 59

Chapter 4 "He's Not Here" 69

Chapter 5 Daylight 85

Chapter 6 In the Command Center 91

Chapter 7 "We're in Big Trouble" 107

Chapter 8 "Johnny Load Is Missing" 115

Chapter 9 To the West-End Buoy 143

Chapter 10 Command and Control 149

Chapter 11 The Landward Watch 167

Chapter 12 Cutting Loose 179

Chapter 13 Found 191

Chapter 14 "it's Over" 195

Chapter 15 Saved 203

Chapter 16 The Good Daughter 211

Chapter 17 Postscripts and Parties 217

Epilogue 223

Appendix A Assets Deployed to Find and Rescue John Aldridge 239

Appendix B "The Tale of Johnny Load 245

Index 249

Editorial Reviews

"A Speck in the Sea is a terrific read-harrowing and inspiring at the same time. In the end it's a moving testament both to our individual will to survive and to our collective will to come to the aid of others in distress. I couldn't put it down."
—Daniel James Brown, author of The Boys in the Boat

"Sometimes being a hero means just hanging on and having faith—which is exactly what John Aldridge and Anthony Sosinski did on July 24, 2013. This is an amazing tale of survival, family, community, and friendship from two true American originals."
—Paul Tough, New York Magazine

"A robust portrait of working-class Montauk, the Long Island community... richly detailed."
—Kirkus Review

"This absolutely riveting book follows the increasingly desperate (and, at times, disorganized) rescue efforts as well as Aldridge's own odyssey (How does a man facing near-certain death keep himself believing he might survive?)... the book is... captivating."

—Booklist

"A rich backstory-including complicated personal lives and deep family histories-adds depth to this page turner."

—Publishers Weekly

"A Speck in the Sea is not just about a man lost in the Atlantic. It's an inspiring story of hope, strength, and the love people have for their community. In this tale of heroism and survival, readers will find pieces of themselves and the people they love as they see a family and community brought together."

—Dan's Papers

"Inspiring."—The East Hampton Star

From the Publisher

03/27/2017
A Long Island fisherman spends 12 hours bobbing like a buoy in the Atlantic Ocean in this hair-raising true story. Childhood friends Aldridge and Sosinski, who co-own the lobster boat Anna Mary, detail their incredible story, which took place 40 miles off the coast of Montauk in the summer of 2013. The trip began just like any other, with the authors, along with third crew member Mike Migliaccio, setting out their traps aboard the 44-foot commercial fishing boat Anna Mary the evening of July 22, 2013. In the early hours of July 23, as Sosinski and Migliaccio slept, Aldridge fell overboard while recalibrating the boat’s new refrigeration system. Told from multiple viewpoints, the book takes readers into the water with Aldridge as he shares first-person accounts of shark encounters and the mind games he played while clinging to his rubber boots to stay afloat. Sections written in the third person recount the immense battle the U.S. Coast Guard, search-and-rescue aircraft, and a slew of volunteers (including singer Jimmy Buffet) waged against time to find Aldridge before the ocean claimed him. A rich backstory—including complicated personal lives and deep family histories—adds depth to this page turner. (May)

Publishers Weekly

2017-04-02
A fishing trip turns into a very bad day in this dramatic though less fraught rejoinder to The Perfect Storm.When he fell from Anna Mary, his lobster boat, into the sea—the result, as he ruefully notes, of an avoidable bad idea—Aldridge writes that he spent some of his time in the water pondering the "if-onlys and I-should-have-dones that would have kept me from going overboard." The rest of the time he spent pondering how to keep from falling asleep and slipping into oblivion while trying to gain a fix on where he was in the water. A skilled seaman, he did so, and his knowledge as much as his strength and good physical condition was responsible for keeping him alive for the hours he was in the water. Meanwhile, as his shipmate Sosinski writes, the crew of the Anna Mary and the Coast Guard used knowledge of their own to locate that lone swimmer in the vastness of the waters off New England. Recounting a real event that took place nearly four years ago, the partners' narrative has its predictable moments, just as one might expect: the regrets, those what-ifs, etc. But, though by-the-numbers in spots, this book has several virtues. For one, like Peter Matthiessen's Men's Lives, it is a robust portrait of working-class Montauk, the Long Island community in the shadow of the tony Hamptons that always seems to be in danger of being crowded into the sea. "The real Montauk is about the fishing," they write. "It always was." For another, the authors offer a richly detailed but not overburdened view of how sea rescue operations are mounted and conducted: there are probabilities and formulas involved but also gut instinct and lots of experience in play. A capable and readable book, though the story is likely to draw its true audience by way of the forthcoming movie it ties into.

Kirkus Reviews