Trawler rescues man stranded for hours in Florida's Intracoastal Waterway after his kayak sank

A trawler crew rescued a man stranded for hours in Florida's Intracoastal Waterway after his kayak sank.

Tom Korinek, was driving his boat in the pitch black water at 4:00am when he spotted a kayaker lost for close to four hours.

Tom, 44, a mobile marine mechanic, was driving his 40-foot-trawler from Cocoa Beach to Fort Pierce when he found the victim floating with no visible boat near him.

He rescued the David Wright, 39, with a life sling and brought him up onto the back swimming deck, as he wasn’t sure whether the man was a danger to him and was totally incoherent.

Tom said: “He was a couple of hundred yards from the land, but it was four o’clock in the morning with a four knot current, he had no idea where he was.

“He had given up by the time I yelled back at him, he stopped yelling completely when I turned around."

Tom happened upon the man by pure coincidence, but he is also fairly certain that the man would have died without him.

"He had about 10-30 minutes if I hadn’t found him."

Initially Tom thought David, was drunk because of how exhausted he was, and had fallen into the water in a stupor.

“I thought he was wasted, I was irritated, that’s why I was rude to him at the beginning.”

Once he understood that David was just a fisherman in a bad situation, he pulled him up onto the main deck.

"I dragged him onto the deck like a dead fish," Tom said.

"When I grabbed him by the hand it was the most wrinkly hand I've ever seen, it almost felt fake."

Earlier in the day, David lost his paddle after letting some children play with his kayak and had spent until nightfall searching for it.

He eventually gave up and tried to fashion a makeshift paddle from a stick.

He also believes that they may have also loosened the drain plug, causing the kayak to sink.