By Adrian Sainz
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MIAMI - An 80-year-old diver spent 18 hours holding on to a floating buoy in the cold, rough waters of the Atlantic Ocean before he was found by a relative Sunday during an exhaustive search off the Florida Keys.
Ignacio Siberio survived with the help of a wet suit and instincts developed from more than 60 years of free diving and spear fishing and was recovering from his ordeal Sunday night at his weekend home in Tavernier. He was not hospitalized after his rescue.
His great nephew, Carlos Lopez, was on a friend's boat when they spotted Siberio swimming to shore about 10:30 a.m. Sunday, more than 18 hours after Siberio realized Saturday that his boat was no longer anchored.
"I'm feeling OK, but I got back home pretty beaten up, because I was all night and all day in one spot without moving," Siberio said.
Siberio embarked alone on a trip to one of his favorite spear-fishing spots off Tavernier on Saturday about 11 a.m. and realized his anchor was gone about 2:30 p.m.
He furiously swam after the boat for about three miles, Siberio said, before giving up, grabbing a lobster trap's buoy and watching his boat drift away. The small buoys warn boaters that a line attached to a trap is below the water's surface.
As night fell, the temperature dropped to the 50s in the coldest South Florida night this fall. Winds picked up from the north, churning the seas and tossing Siberio around as he gripped the buoy.
"You have to concentrate mentally in an extraordinary way so that you don't get to the point that the cold, the danger, and the fact you are helpless make you quit," Siberio said. "When you quit, it's over."
Meanwhile, Siberio's wife called Lopez to ask if they were together. Lopez realized there may be trouble and called the U.S. Coast Guard, which began a search with aircraft and boats.
Lopez and friend Roberto Garcia drove from Miami to the Keys, hopped on their boats and began looking for Siberio's boat in 4- to 6-foot seas in the dead of night. They ran into trouble themselves, with Lopez's boat running aground and needing a tow to shore.
About 2 a.m., the Coast Guard stopped its search.
After daybreak, Siberio began swimming to shore.
At 7:30 a.m. Sunday, the Coast Guard reported finding the boat about 23 miles east of Elliott Key - roughly more than 40 miles from where Siberio began diving Saturday.
That's when Siberio's family became more concerned, and the effort switched to one for a person instead of search a boat.
Lopez and Garcia continued to look, and Garcia spotted Siberio about four miles offshore. They pulled him onto their boat and called the Coast Guard.
"We were very happy after that," Lopez said.
Lopez marveled at the strength of his great uncle. Lopez says that medical personnel were concerned when they checked Siberio's heart rate after his rescue and it was 56.
"The paramedic said, 'Your heartbeat is slow.' He answered, 'That's my normal heart rate,"' Lopez said.
Coast Guard Petty Officer John Zarr was on duty during the Saturday night search and said Siberio's story had "a great ending."
"That's pretty amazing. He's got to be in excellent physical condition," Zarr said Sunday.
Siberio, a Cuban-American lawyer, credited his survival to his knowledge of how to deal with ocean currents and how to handle himself in cold water.
"You can't start thinking for one second what's happening to you, because it will take over," Siberio said. "The sensation that you can die at any moment is constant."
