BODEGA BAY — For the primary time for the reason that 13-year-old San Jose boy awakened shivering and alone on a abandoned stretch of seashore two weeks in the past, lined in salt and sand after clinging for hours to a floating ice chest, he returned Saturday to wish.
Jude Khammoungkhoune’s father had clutched the cooler beside him so long as he may after their household fishing boat sank in tough ocean waters, scattering its six passengers, together with three cousins and a household pal, the night of Nov. 2.
Jude is the only real survivor. He’s had nightmares — about falling into the frigid water, about gripping the cooler, about how he and his dad talked about surviving the evening.
“We would have gotten out of this together,” Jude mentioned.
As a full moon rose over Bodega Bay on Saturday, Jude’s mom, Yathida, two youthful siblings and about 60 prolonged members of the family and buddies lit candles and prayed that every one the our bodies could be discovered. In Buddhist custom, they carried a contemporary set of his father’s garments to organize him for his journey to the subsequent life. As monks chanted, Jude knelt down subsequent to his mom, folded his fingers and joined in prayer.
Saturday night was calm in comparison with the day when the boat went down, with barely a touch of a breeze. Jude stood by the boat dock the place that they had solid off that morning, after they dreamed of a giant catch and the particular crab stir fry with ginger and scallions his mom would make after they acquired house.
Gathering with kinfolk on the vigil helped him concentrate on the pleased instances along with his dad, he mentioned, like when he was 5 and caught his first fish — a striper — and the way his dad was so proud and took his image. Because the solar went down, Jude felt a chill, however shook it off.
“I’ve been through it,” he mentioned. “I’m used to the cold already.”
The sinking of the 21-foot Bayliner that Jude’s father, Prasong, saved parked within the driveway of their downtown San Jose condominium additionally claimed Jude’s shut kinfolk from Rancho Tehama, northwest of Chico, together with his dad’s cousin, Johnny Phommathep and two of his six sons, Johnny Jr., 17, and Jake, 14. In a tragic twist, each boys — and their mom Tiffany — had been wounded in 2017 when a college shooter fired into their automobile in Rancho Tehama.
“My sons escaped death once,” Tiffany mentioned, “and death came for them again.”
Prasong Khammoungkhoune, 45, was one of many lacking boaters misplaced to the ocean off the coast of Sonoma close to Bodega Bay. Prasong liked fishing and the ocean was his second house in line with members of the family on the GoFundMe submit. He was a husband and father of three younger youngsters. (Photograph courtesy of the household)
She has been strolling the seashores almost daily since, hoping, but fearing, to seek out indicators of her misplaced family members. The our bodies of her 17-year-old and what seems to be her husband have been recovered by others. Her 14-year-old remains to be lacking.
How Jude, the oldest son of Laotian refugees, survived in a single day in waters that plunged to 52 levels, with swells that reached 8 toes is phenomenal, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Rob Dillion mentioned. “The fact that this young man was able to keep himself afloat, not lose his grip on the ice chest and stay calm enough to know that he should stay put while it’s dark — it’s unbelievable.”
Jude — quick for Juladi — is an Eighth-grader who likes to play basketball after faculty and spend weekends fishing along with his dad, who ran his personal enterprise as a courier. Half Moon Bay for striped bass. Bodega Bay for the beginning of crab season.
He advised his harrowing story this previous week sitting subsequent to his mom within the household house, the place his father’s fishing poles nonetheless lean in opposition to the wall.
Towing the Bayliner behind them, father and son left San Jose earlier than midnight, and by 4 a.m. that Saturday, that they had met up with their cousins and longtime pal Matthew Ong, 42, and had been launching their boat into the bay. A small craft advisory had been issued, however all was calm earlier than daybreak.
As they motored into open waters, Jude’s job was to maintain observe of the ring nets that captured the crabs. They had been hoping for higher luck on the primary day of leisure crab season, however the 13 crabs they caught by nightfall had been higher than none. The solar was setting, the wind was selecting as much as a brisk 15 mph and the waters had been tough as they hauled within the final web of the day from the again nook of the boat.
Out of the blue, as they pulled within the line, a wave washed over the rear, swamping the again compartments that held the batteries and gasoline tank. They tried to motor ahead hoping the water would pour out. As a substitute, Jude remembers listening to the ring web line snap and the motor sputter as among the adults scrambled to placed on life jackets because the boat sank.
And identical to that, he mentioned, “We just went overboard in the water.”
With darkness descending and their cell telephones sinking to the underside of the Pacific Ocean, the three teenage boys and three males of their 40s discovered themselves on the mercy of the perilous Pacific 4 miles from shore.
Jude and his father grabbed the big white ice chest that was principally empty aside from some leftover hen and heaved themselves excessive. They rapidly overlooked everybody else.
“We were getting a little bit farther and the waves were pretty high,” he mentioned, “so we couldn’t really see the boat anymore.”
They held on because the solar set over the Pacific Ocean.
“Everything’s going to be OK,” his dad advised him.
They held on because the wind howled and the shoreline disappeared in the dead of night.
“We’re going to make it,” his dad mentioned.
Was it two hours? It may have been 4. Father and son aspect by aspect, surging up and down with the swells, clinging to an ice chest, hoping to outlive.
“I love you,” his dad mentioned.
“I love you, too,” Jude mentioned.
As time wore on and the water roughened, Jude sensed his dad getting colder and weaker.
In a single significantly violent crash of waves in opposition to the cooler, Jude mentioned, “he slipped off.”
His father mentioned one thing to him then, however Jude couldn’t make it out. The cacophony of the waves hitting the ice chest and crashing in opposition to one another and a seagull squawking overhead had been all too loud.
He watched his dad, like his cousins, disappear.
“I was thinking that I was going to die,” Jude mentioned. “I didn’t really know what I was going to do without him, because he was a little bit more smarter than me and knew more survival than I did.”
So with the moon a sliver, the evening acquired darker. By about 2 a.m. the seas calmed and someway, in some unspecified time in the future, with Jude nonetheless holding on, the ocean should have rocked him to sleep.
Returning for the primary time since he survived a fishing boat tragedy that swept away his father and 4 others, 13-year-old Jude Khammoungkhoune returns to Bodega Bay, Calif., Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024. (Karl Mondon/Bay Space Information Group)
The following factor he remembers is waking up tumbling within the surf. It was pitch black. He had misplaced his grip on the ice chest. Solely his life vest saved him afloat.
“It felt like a tsunami,” he mentioned. “I just kind of floated myself and let the waves just push me a little bit closer to the point I could stand up. I felt dizzy everywhere I looked.”
He made his means simply above the water line, then collapsed onto the seashore and fell asleep. However the waves rolled in and startled him awake, so he moved a couple of extra toes, plopped down and fell asleep once more. He did this a number of instances that evening.
“I just kept going, and then I just slept again — until it was morning,” he mentioned.
He had landed on an unlimited, desolate stretch of seashore on a chilly windy morning. His socks and boots, Nike pants, black T-shirt and jacket had been sodden and sandy.
As he regarded out throughout the ocean the place his father misplaced his grip, he caught sight of a U.S. Coast Guard boat — proper there!
“And then I saw a helicopter, a Coast Guard helicopter, then a Coast Guard plane,” he mentioned. “I was waving to them. I kept saying, ‘Help!’”
However they didn’t hear him. He determined to hike inland the place he came across the Bodega Dunes Campground. He hailed a girl driving by.
“I told her my boat sank and I slept on the beach,” he mentioned. “Can you drive me home?”
She known as 911 as a substitute.
Jude was launched from the hospital inside hours with no scratch. However he spent the primary few days at house in San Jose in tears, he mentioned. His counselor at college advised him to not really feel responsible about surviving, that he all the time had somebody to speak to. GoFundMe crowdfunding accounts have been began for Jude’s household and for the Phommathep household.
In a photograph taken earlier this yr, Johhny Phommathep, and two sons, Johnny Jr, 17, and Jake, 14, take pleasure in a day of fishing. The three disappeared into the open ocean off Bodega Bay Nov. 2 when a household fishing boat carrying six passengers sank in tough waters. A 13-year-old cousin survived. (picture courtesy of Tiffany Phommathep)
Jude nonetheless doesn’t know what his father was attempting to inform him when he slipped off the cooler that evening, however he wonders if letting go was a selfless act, if perhaps he was giving Jude a greater probability to outlive.
“It gave me a little bit of an advantage to get to land faster,” Jude mentioned.
Jude’s mom and grandmother are sure of it. On Saturday, with candles lit, they thanked him and prayed for his protected passage.
