Sailor in Viral Rescue Video Had a Good Plan...Until the Boat Broke

Had Begun Heading to Shark River Hurricane Hole Two Days Ahead of Helene

Once in the water, Earl Barcome’s golden retriever Gunn headed right for the Coast Guard rescue swimmer’s rescue basket. (Todd Hudson’s helmet-cam footage)

Earl Barcome and his dog Gunn are momentarily famous, having been featured in a helmet-cam video gone viral after they were rescued in heavy seas while Hurricane Helene was barreling toward Florida’s Big Bend region. Barcome radioed the Coast Guard after his 36-foot sloop Selkie¹ had become disabled about 25 miles off the Southwest Coast of Florida.

As Barcome and Gunn rest in a Fort Myers motel, many in the sailing community responded to the video predictably: What was Barcome doing out at sea in the middle of a hurricane to begin with?

Dramatic Video of Coast Guard Rescuing Man and Dog

Which is a passive-aggressive way of saying that the guy had to be a knucklehead.

The reality is different. According to his family, Barcome has been going through a difficult patch in his life. His relationship of 30-plus years had recently ended. He was practically broke after acquiring a boat that he hoped would carry him to a better place in life. Here’s what his sister, Shirley Barcome, wrote:

Earl was left with little but his lifelong dream of living on a sailboat. Determined to make it happen, he spent months traveling the heartland, camping under the stars, and tracking the perfect boat. Against all odds, he managed to buy it—overloaded credit card and all—and set sail for Florida to start a new chapter.

Barcome, 64 and a gunsmith by profession, was taking inspiration from a charismatic Los Angeles pastor who urges his flock to live courageously, eschewing “safety, comfort and security.”² He posted this on his Instagram page a few days before Helene became a threat:

But neither his personal history nor introspection add up to knucklehead.

The notion of running south from Sanibel Island to shelter in the Shark River two days before Helene’s arrival appears to have been a pretty sound strategy for someone who probably didn’t have the wherewithal to pay for a haul-out, rent a car and head to a hotel on the Atlantic side of Florida.

Messages to Barcome and his brother and sister haven’t received a response yet. However, the Go-Fund-Me organized by his sister Shirley said he was headed “100 miles south from Sanibel Island to wait it out in a protected inlet.” There’s only one place that fits that description—the Shark River, a hurricane hole favored by sailors in Southwest Florida and the Keys.

The Shark River features numerous mangrove channels with excellent holding. It lies on a south-southeast heading, 100 miles from Sanibel, and significantly further away from Helene’s projected path. The forecast storm surge for that part of the coast was only one-to-two feet, less than the four foot surge predicted for Sanibel and Fort Myers.

The Shark River lies on the outermost edge of forecast tropical winds, well away from Hurricane conditions.

The blue area was predicted to have only one or two feet of surge.

Departing on Tuesday, Sept. 24, Barcome and Selkie departed Sanibel while Helene was still a tropical storm off the Yucatan peninsula. Depending on when he got underway, he would have at Shark River some time the next day, assuming an average speed of 4.5 knots. Even if he arrived late Wednesday, Barcome would have had time to find snug anchorage and tie off to the mangroves.

Then, Murphy’s Law struck. According to his brother, with whom he was exchanging messages, his engine overheated early Wednesday. (One description suggested that his exhaust hose had burst.) In any event, Selkie was taking on water. Then, the bilge pump quit. Despite the difficulties, when he and his brother talked at 8:30 a.m., Barcome said that he had the situation under control. Then, the call dropped.

Selkie was about 50 miles south of Sanibel when this happened, his brother said. That was where the real difficulties began. As she entered the Gulf of Mexico, the leading edges of Helene’s counterclockwise wind-flow began driving Selkie away from her destination, northwesterly further out in the Gulf.

Barcome texted his brother at 10:30 a.m., reporting that he had been dealing with some rigging failures in between hand-pumping water out of the bilge. When Don Barcome and his sister heard nothing more for hours after that, they filed missing-at-sea reports with Collier County authorities and the Coast Guard.

The rescue happened on September 26 as Helene bore down on the Florida coast, and soon the video was everywhere, from the New York Times to Loose Cannon and every media outlet in between.

Though he had been living in Colorado before buying his boat, Barcome was a North Dakota native, and his local TV stations produced stories about the video. In the first one to be aired, rescue swimmer Todd Hudson quoted Barcome in the helicopter as saying, “when he called the Coast Guard, that’s when he decided to live.”

In a second video, parts of which are shown below, Barcome recalls that same moment. He was talking to his 10-year-old golden retriever as the water rose around them.

NBC2'S Christy Soto Speaks With Earl Barcome at His Hotel

Barcome may have been an novice, but he had started out with a decent plan. Yes, he had invested everything in that boat. No, he probably shouldn’t have waited until it had been blown 60 miles further off course before asking to be rescued.

However, were it not for Gunn, would Barcome have made the call at all?

According to Hudson, after Barcome lowered Gunn into the water, the dog swam right over to the rescue basket. Barcome followed his good boy.

Barcome and Gunn in Selkie’s saloon. (Photo from the Go-Fund-Me campaign page)

1. A selkie is a mythical creature that can transform between human and seal forms. The word "selkie" comes from the Scots word for "seal" and was first used around 1690.

2. This is the description from a YouTube video featuring Erwin McManus of the Mosaic Church of Los Angeles:

Mosaic Lead Pastor Erwin McManus helps us unpack how fear impacts our lives and can paralyze us from stepping into the future we long for. He encourages us to look at fear differently. What if our fear is not situational but simply a reality we have allowed to rule us from the inside-out? What if the things we are most afraid of are simply the objects we project our innermost fears onto? What if living courageously was a choice? In Joshua chapter 1, God commanded Joshua and his people to be strong and courageous. This means choosing courage is not simply a suggestion God gives us, but a command.