Missing Diver Safe After 27 Hours at Sea

Peter T. Megis Jr. tossed about in eight-foot ocean swells, watching Navy and Coast Guard helicopters vainly searching for him for nearly six hours Sunday.

At times, the choppers flew within 100 yards of him, Megis said Monday, but their pilots were unable to spot his wet suit in the turbulent seas four miles from Channel Islands Harbor.

The Coast Guard, after looking for Megis all Sunday afternoon, called off the search and did not resume it Monday.

After spending nearly 27 hours riding currents that took him from Ventura Harbor to Point Mugu, Megis on Monday pulled himself onto oil platform Gilda, 10 miles off the coast of Port Hueneme, and declared himself to be quite alive.

“I’m well and kicking, not even in a hospital,” Megis said, remarkably unfazed by the ordeal. “I had a lot of fun. I’m serious.”

“We sure were surprised to see him,” said a rig worker who asked not to be identified. “He was fine. We have an emergency medical technician on duty 24 hours a day, so we set him up with warm clothing, took his blood pressure and temperature and gave him food and drink.”

Megis, a 27-year-old Navy petty officer who lives in Oxnard, was feared to be dead after he failed to surface while scuba diving Sunday to spearfish and explore a shipwreck in 80 feet of water. He had dived off a 26-foot pleasure boat, and his companion sent out a distress signal when Megis failed to surface after an hour.

Megis said that when he surfaced from his dive, he found himself about 50 yards from his friend’s boat and unable to be heard over the noise of the sea. A severe riptide then swept him a quarter of a mile from the boat.

A Coast Guard helicopter and two cutters were joined by a helicopter from the Point Mugu naval station. “They were always within a hundred yards to two miles of me,” Megis said. “All my equipment’s black, so I didn’t show up too well in 8-to-10-foot seas.”

Toward nightfall, the seas kicked up to 12 feet.

Megis said he was not concerned, even after sunset. “I could always swim back to the beach,” he said.

Megis said he just floated with the currents toward the island, but the riptides were too strong for him. “They were running parallel to the island. I couldn’t get through them, even though it was a couple hundred yards.”

About 11 p.m. Sunday, after 12 hours in the water, Megis went to sleep, kept afloat by his wet suit and scuba gear. “I was never lost at sea,” he said, to explain his ability to sleep. “You can’t be lost if you can see the land everywhere.”

“Every two hours I’d wake up and swim real hard so I would warm up a bit and not freeze to death,” Megis said. Water temperatures were about 60 degrees.

Megis awoke Monday morning when the sun rose, finding that he had floated closer to Point Mugu. He was within a few miles of the oil rigs, made a shot for two of them but was repelled by the currents. He succeeded in reaching the third after a six-hour swim.