Getty Image / Wesley Hitt
Chris Smelley is a former University of South Carolina Gamecocks quarterback who was in Columbia, SC for three years before transferring to the University of Alabama where he switched sports and played baseball from 2009-2010. These days, the Tuscaloosa native is the Sylacauga football coach in his native Alabama but he was in Florida last week and lost in the Gulf of Mexico for 11 hours in a kayak.
Smelley was kayak fishing on Thursday when he was swept out to see. After being rescued by a helicopter, Chris Smelley joined WBRC’s Mike Dubberly to talk about being lost at sea.
He explained how it all went down, saying his body basically acted as a large wind sail that kept pulling him further out to sea. Smelley said the wind was much stronger once he got offshore and he tried in vain for a while to paddle against the wind until he relented and hoped it would ease up.
The former dual sport SEC star joked that he wished he had a better story. Telling Mike Dubberly “I was in a big, heavy kayak. And I got out there and right off the shore, the wind was just whipping and a lot stronger than it was at shore. I wish there was a story that a giant shark dragged me out or I was battling a sea monster – but it was really just nature – it was just the wind. My body was sitting up tall and I was basically just a big sail. I was giving it everything I could and there was a long period of time where I was at the mercy of the wind.”
Smelley was the 27th ranked quarterback in the 2006 recruiting class when he signed to go play for Steve Spurrier’s Gamecocks. He was an incredible athlete than and he’s still in great shape now, but that wasn’t enough and while he was stuck at sea for 11+ hours he began to worry that he would have to spend the night out there in his kayak.
Admitting he’s comfortable at sea, he still felt some nerves about a potential night in a kayak. Telling Mike Dubberly “I wouldn’t say I was necessarily scared, but there was sometimes where, especially as the sun started going down, and I had seen the rescue helicopters fly over me pretty close by a few times but they didn’t see me, that I thought I was going to spend the night in the ocean. So, I had just caught a fish and was preparing to clean it to give me some energy to try to keep paddling back in when the rescue helicopter pulled in.”
Thankfully for him and his family, the helicopter rescue crew found him and he was able to make it back to his wife before something tragic happened. He also said he was pretty tempted to paddle back out on Good Friday for some kayak fishing but his wife wasn’t having it.
Smelley finished by saying that he had put himself in this predicament by not being prepared. Saying “I went out with no phone and no life jacket – so I think lesson learned in just understanding that when you’re going out in a situation like that, safety is at the top of your mind.”
If you are going to be out fishing, hiking, hunting, etc by yourself it is ALWAYS best to make sure you having your phone with you. While you might not have cell service once you are miles off the grid, the GPS might still come in handy when rescue crews come looking.