ShareThisAfter being lost for eight days on an unforgiving Gulf of Mexico, James Phillips now finds himself in an equally strange place.
On his way to New York City on Monday afternoon to appear on CBS' early morning news show, Phillips admitted in a phone interview that his newfound celebrity status is not the sort one fantasizes about.
"I never thought I'd be stranded in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, that's for sure," he said.
Along with Curtis Hall, 28, of Palacios, Texas and Tressel Hawkins, 43, of Markham, Texas, Phillips, 30, was aboard a 23-foot catamaran that capsized, launching a wide search for the craft and survivors.
It is the sort of tale that sounds ripped out of a pulp yarn.
Fishing for swordfish, the men were missed by a storm, but they were feeling ill at ease, Philips recalled. "We just had a bad feeling we were in the wrong spot the whole time," he said. "We should have just tried to come in, I guess."
But they didn't, and during the night things went from uneasy to unthinkable.
"We got out there Friday night and went to sleep," he remembered. A bilge pump quit doing its work, and one of the catamaran's pontoons filled with water.
"The boat rolled over," Phillips said. "By the time we woke up and saw what was happening, it wasn't a minute before were in the water."
The men grabbed what supplies they could, he said -- bubble gum, crackers, beer and chips.
They used a hose to choke down fresh water out of an internal tank more commonly used to remove the residue of fish slime, even though the water tasted of diesel. They made flags from their garments, praying daily that someone would find them.
Sharks began to circle, and food and water of all sorts began to grow short.
Then hallucinations set in -- the men imagined rescuers coming to drop off food.
Their actual rescuer, Eddie Yaklin, a car dealer, and his 75-foot yacht at first seemed something of a hallucination, as well.
But in what could have been depths of despair, threatened by the deeps of the water, Phillips said he found God waiting. He made promises out there in the blistering sun and the uncertain night, and he plans to "keep every one of them."
"We had to depend on God to get us out," he said. "It was nothing less than a miracle -- three guys sitting on what looks like a little inner tube in the middle of the ocean, basically. Six feet of the boat still sticking out of the water, floating around on it. It was like a needle in a haystack."
The men reported seeing Coast Guard helicopters and planes fly over, but the Coast Guard gave up the search after the men had been missing a week.
Most small craft -- like the one they were on -- couldn't hope to travel the distance they drifted, Phillips said. The men were found sitting on the boat 180 miles from land.
Asked to muse on the incredible journey he and the other men endured, he described it initially as "life-changing" with no trace of irony in his solid, good-natured tone.
Upon reflection, he said the experience, though horrific, bonded the three men. Hall and Hawkins work with Phillips at his business, "Born Again Repairs."
He notes that the business, mostly devoted to tractors, "got into some boat repairs the last year or so."
"Now I'm the sinking boat business," he joked.
In his hometown of Munday, Texas, all through the ordeal, a flood of support from friends, neighbors and family helped Phillips' parents endure the dark hours, said his mother, Penny Phillips.
People who hadn't been in touch for years called, asking if the "little cottontop" boy they remembered was the one being sought on land, air and sea.
"If you know James, you like James," Penny Phillips said. "He never met a stranger. Everything he does, he does with his heart."
In the end, the experience taught them all, she said. "God worked on this whole family," she said. "He mended hearts, he mended relationships. He tried to teach me patience, but I kept asking him to please hurry."
As soon as their son gets home from New York, Chris and Penny Phillips plan to visit. She plans to admonish him to take up something more sedate, like golf.
"He's always been kind of a thrill seeker," she said, saying that she thought the worst thing she would ever have to endure was some time he spent racing cars earlier in life.
But James Phillips may not yet be done with the sea.
"We're going to go back to the Gulf of Mexico," he said. "I'm going to get back on that horse."
At which point he paused, obviously reflecting.
"It's not going to be anytime real soon," he said, laughing.
(Brian Bethel is a reporter for The Abilene Reporter-News in Texas.)
