Fishing trip turns into rescue

Mike Hughes and his colleagues at Naples-based Downing-Frye Realty caught more than fish when they headed down to the Keys recently.

About 25 miles off Islamorada in the Atlantic Ocean, Hughes and his colleagues spotted a tiny 12-foot boat bobbing between the swells with Cuban refugees huddled inside. The five men and one pregnant woman appeared desperate for food and water.

Worried they might be armed and dangerous, Hughes tossed drinking water to them while remaining at a safe distance and called the U.S. Coast Guard. “They were drifting to Europe,” says Hughes, the vice president and general manager of the Naples residential real estate brokerage.

Hughes says the tiny craft floated six inches above the water line in eight-foot seas with only a tiny sail and no motor. “They're lucky we spotted them,” Hughes says. “It just registered with me the plight of these people.”

Hughes' fishing party stayed with the small craft until the Coast Guard arrived to rescue them an hour later. “I think they were returned to Cuba because they didn't get a foot on land,” he says. “It still beats drowning at sea.”

This isn't Hughes' first experience with a marine rescue of Cuban refugees. “It happened to me one other time, two years ago, off Marathon we came across a 26-foot-boat with 28 people,” he says.