MIAMI --
Rescuers found a man whose boat crashed in an Everglades canal Tuesday evening after firefighters and officials searched for him for hours.
Jack Furley's 18-foot bass fishing boat crashed in the Miami Canal just after 6:30 p.m.
"I called 911. I had to get out of there. I knew I wasn't walking out," Furley said.
North and south of Mile Marker 35 on Alligator Alley, rescuers on boats and in the air launched an all-out search for a missing boater. Furley, whose cell phone had lost its signal, sat alone in his boat while rescuers kept missing him.
With no moonlight to guide them, firefighters in a Broward Sheriff's Fire Rescue boat could not see through the sawgrass in the Miami Canal.
"It was very difficult, especially not knowing where he was and receiving very little information from dispatch," said Lt. John Monti.
Nearly two hours into the search, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue sent its helicopter to look from above. Rescuers found Furley and his boat. They plucked him from the vessel and carried him in the chopper to the boat ramp where he had launched earlier in the evening.
With a paramedic on each arm, Furley walked out of the helicopter with a smile on his face and cuts on his forehead.
"I only hit the weeds at about 70 miles an hour," Furley joked.
He described plowing straight into a patch of sawgrass and small trees and muck, hitting his head on the windshield of the boat.
Furley, who was treated in an ambulance and allowed to go home, said he knew he was lucky. But he was not frightened.
"I'm never scared. Right hand to God," he said. "No, really, it's just, you deal with it. That's how I was raised and that's how I'm as lucky as I am."
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