Welcome to Elevate with Elsner. Join us for inspiring conversations with individuals who have transformed their lives and are making a difference through the work that they do. And now, here's your host, Blake Elsner.

Welcome back to another episode of Elevate with Elsner. Today we've got another incredible guest joining us. Someone's story who has truly been inspiring. It's been chronicled in one of the most thrilling and powerful books out there, On the Edge of Survival by Spike Walker. My guest Aaron Bean lived through experiences that most of us can only imagine. His journey is one of endurance, survival, and the triumph of human spirit when faced with extreme adversity. Without giving away too much yet, Aaron's story is an unforgettable one that will truly make you reflect on what it means to push through the toughest of the challenges. We'll be diving into the events of the book, the emotions and the lessons learned from it all. So stay tuned here as we uncover Aaron's incredible narrative of survival and resilience. So without further ado, Aaron, welcome to the show.

Blake Elsner

Thanks, Elsner I appreciate that. I'm excited to elevate your audience north to Alaska. This is where my story is north to Alaska.

Aaron Bean

Yes. So let's just let's let you get going. What that let's take us to the morning of, you know, there's a big rescue that a call comes over. So just kind of start us start us out on your day of kind of what happened that morning.

Yeah, so we were actually, me and my best friend, another rescue swimmer, we were tasked with deploying to St. Paul Island in Alaska. We were on Kodiak Island. The whole purpose of this deployment was that all the other Coast Guard assets in the area wanted to come home and be home for Christmas. we were going to be the Coast Guard's presence in the Bering Sea during that period. And we're waiting to leave for our deployment. And before we took off, we got word that there was a freighter, a Malaysian freighter with 26 souls on board that was, I think the report was that they were drifting, that they had lost power and were drifting in the Bering Sea. My buddy and I, we were excited to affect this rescue. We took off later in the day. And our plan was still to get to St. Paul Island. But while we were in flight, operations diverted us to Cold Bay, Alaska. And that's where we all landed. And as soon as we landed, we got word that this freighter was really in trouble. a tow ship. The Sydney Foss had got to them and was trying to help tow them to safety. And then a Coast Guard ship, the Alex Haley, had arrived later in the night and was affecting the rescue by towing this vessel to safety. And this Coast Guard ship could have towed this huge freighter through the Panama Canal if it needed to, but This was December in Alaska. December 8th is when the Rio party started. The tow line between the Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley and this Malaysian freighter, the Selandang IU, it had broken half while they were towing it. This was a huge, huge tow line. They called us. We were in Cold Bay. They said we need immediate assistance. You know, this vessel is in distress. And so we took off immediately. I was in the Coast Guard Rescue Helicopter 6020. That's just how we called it. 6020 was the tail number. And we arrived on scene first. We saw that the vessel was drifting, no power, they weren't under power at all. They did have a huge generator running on the ship so you could see all the lights on their vessel, they still had electricity. We watched them put one of their anchors down because they were very close to shore. Everybody always gives me a hard time about this rescue because We were so close to shore, but this is Alaska. There was no there was no beach. All right. It went it went ocean mountain. Yeah. OK. So like people said, well, Dean, why didn't you just swim, swim to shore? Well, I would have had to swim to a mountain and then climb the mountain. So not that I couldn't have done that, but I just anyway.

No beach umbrella waiting for you there.

Nothing cool at the beach. So this vessel put their anchor down and that anchor chain broke. The chain just ripped itself apart. They put their starboard anchor down and as soon as they did that, They went bow into the waves, which is a really good position for boats to be in. That's how they want to transit. And it made the vessel, the ship, a really stable platform for us to move in and pick up those 26 sailors. And we got to work right away. We pulled into a 40-foot hover above the deck of the ship. We picked up nine guys that were kind of straggling their way off the ship. A decision to evacuate the ship really hadn't been made because the captain wanted to continue and effect repairs on the vessel in order to get it underway. However, he did agree to let, you know, 18 guys off the ship and my crew picked up the first nine. and my best friend Joey, his crew picked up the second nine and we delivered nine guys down to the Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley in what is described on YouTube. I don't know if any of your listeners watch YouTube, but there's this video called Impressive Piloting where it shows us uh hoisting down to the Alex Haley and this the Alex Haley is underway and it's in huge seas and it's our helicopter is just like following it up and down in the seas as we're hoisting down to it we we delivered nine guys to safety um and we peeled off as soon as uh we peeled off the other crew had gotten their nine guys and they asked us um if we could land and We could take their nine and take them to safety because after the first nine guys got delivered to the Alex Haley, we agreed that we weren't going to be hoisting to the Alex Haley anymore. They actually called us on the radio halfway during the hoist and said, we need to wave off. We need to stop hoisting because we're outside of the limitations for ship helicopter operations. The aircraft commander, he turned off the radio at that point, told the pilot at the controls, just keep doing what you're doing, because it was really intense. And anyway, we successfully landed in the snow, picked up the other nine guys from the other helicopter crew, and we brought them to safety. We brought them to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, on Alaska Island. Customs and Border Protection met them at the aircraft. They actually instructed us to lock them in the aircraft because they were not vetted to come into the country. But, you know, Customs and Border Protection got there. They brought them into the United States and we pushed the aircraft, our helicopter, into the hangar. Someone let us borrow a some hangar space and I went in to go get a government vehicle and take the guys to the Grand Aleutian Hotel. On my way to get the government vehicle, I was talking to one of the Coast Guard officers. He asked me, he said, what's going on out there? I was like trying to explain to him and that's really when I realized like there was some intense shit going on. Like I described to him how this braider the waves would hit it and it would come out of the water and you could see like that big bulb nose that you wouldn't normally be able to see part of that ship unless they like pulled it out of the water for like dry dock operations so the waves were huge it was majorly affecting the ship uh And yeah, so I explained a little bit of this to this officer. He got me a government vehicle. I'm back at the hangar, ready to pick up the guys. They were ready to go to the Grand Aleutian and drink beer and relax and have a good time. However, operations called. They literally said, we have some more ridiculous tasking for you. And they said, we need you back out on scene. We told them 100 reasons why we couldn't go back out. We had flown over the limitation of flight hours for the day for an aircrew. We had flown over the hours for a mission for the day. We had maintenance due on the tail rotor. We needed to re-torque the rotor blades. We had damage to the aircraft. We had so many reasons not to go out, and they were like, we'll waive it, all of it. We'll waive the maintenance requirements. We'll waive the operational requirements. Everything's waived. You guys, we need you out there. So I think I was probably the first person to agree to go back out and then everybody else reluctantly agreed as well. And we got back in the helicopter, we got it started up. As soon as we got it started up, we were on the ground still. We were getting calls from the Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley like, 6-0-2-0, 6-0-2-0, return to scene, return to scene, where are you? What's your ops and location? And I was waiting to take off before I broadcast my ops and position because I had a high frequency radio. And if I were to key it up on the ground, it could harm people. So I waited until we were wheels up to broadcast the high-frequency radio transmission that says we were in flight, en route to scene. We were 15 minutes out. Anyway, so we get out to the vessel again. It's still got that one anchor chain holding. As soon as we show up, another Coast Guard helicopter flies right past us. And we were like, where the fuck did they come from? We actually, my pilot said, we just went from hero to zero, because these guys were hailing us on the radio. And they said, look, we're going to move in. We're going to pick up the first four. You guys move in. You pick up the second four. Apparently, while we were on the ground, the Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley rolled out their helicopter. got it spun up and launched it. And their aircraft is a lot smaller than ours. And so we just said on the radio, no, we'll move in. We'll pick up the last eight and you cover us. And they agreed. And that's exactly what we did. We just moved right into where we've been hoisting all day. The eight guys were sitting on the deck waiting for us. They were ready to go. A decision was made to abandon the ship. And we put the rescue basket right in front of them. but just lowered it down on the winch and no one moved towards it at all. It was like within arm's length of them and no one wanted to get in the basket. So we brought the basket back into the cabin. The aircraft commander looks back at us and he says, get that basket on the fucking deck right now. And so we put it down. We're like screaming at them. Obviously they can't hear us because there's two jet engines running, there's rotor blades, there's, uh, and our transmission that runs the gearbox is so loud. No one can hear anything other than our aircraft. So we're just kind of like making movements like to get in the basket. They won't get in. Brian Lickfield, my flight mechanic, he brings the basket back into the cabin and the aircraft commander looks back. His name's Dave Neal. He goes, Bean, get their goddamn asses in that basket. I said, yes, sir. I ripped into some of my rescue equipment because I was in just my air crew ensemble. And so I was going to put on my rescue swimmer suit. Well, he said, the aircraft commander said, no, Bean, get in the basket, which I'm just going to say right now, basket hoists of rescue swimmers is not like in the manual for helicopter rescue swimmers. We usually get deployed, you know, with our harness or free fall or, you know, we don't typically get deployed to to rescue people inside the rescue basket. But I agreed. This was my first rescue. I had only 20 hours of flight time. Dave Neal was a night stalker pilot, so he had flown thousands of hours in Iraq. He was a badass pilot. So he said, get in the basket. And I got in the basket. I went down. I grabbed one of the first guys, shoved him in the basket. Up he went. And I just continued that operation. Some huge waves were coming over the side of the ship, like right facing where those guys were sitting. So I think that was probably what was scaring them from getting in the basket. They didn't really want to let go of where they were. position because they were afraid they'd get swept overboard. So this huge wave hits the ship. It breaks like right on my chest, knocks me down. I get washed like 100 yards down the deck of the ship. I stand up and I signal I'm okay. just a hand signal. Well, I'm standing underneath that smaller Coast Guard helicopter that was just covering us. And so I realized, whoa, I need to make my way back to the rescue area. So I hiked my way back over and the rescue basket comes down. Now I'm soaking wet, the rescue basket soaking wet. And When it comes down, I see it spark. A little static electricity gets discharged onto the deck of the freighter. I thought it was grounded, right? So I saw the spark, the baskets on the deck, I thought, good, we're grounded. Well, I grabbed the basket and I'm holding on to another sailor. I get electrocuted all the way up my right arm and I let go and then I shove a guy, I don't know if he's getting electrocuted, but shove the guy in the basket, up he goes. And we did a couple more hoists before another huge wave. This one, you know, I thought it was going to break, boom, right on my chest like the last one did, but it had broke right off the side of the vessel and the water hit the side of the ship and it just sprayed up like I saw just a huge wall of green seawater. It was, uh, it was crazy. And I thought we're good. Like it didn't hit me. And so I said to the, to the last remaining guy, I said, let's go, let's go, let's go. And I hear the number one engine shut down. I hear the number two engine shut down just like the guys were done flying for the day. Like we had landed safely and they had turned the motors off themselves, but In reality, they got hit by the wave. Water went in the engine intakes and put the flame out in the jet engines and so they flew the aircraft forward and down. The main rotor system made contact with the vessel. The rotors just So the rotor system gets blown apart when it hits the ship. They go down into the water and then roll over immediately. I looked overboard after they crashed and I saw USCG, which is painted on the bottom of the aircraft. So they're upside down, which makes sense because the transmission, the engine, the rotor system is the heaviest part of the aircraft. It wants to sink So I kind of compartmentalized what had happened. I said to the last remaining survivor on the ship, I said, well, he asked me, he said, are they okay? I said, no, they're not okay. I said, they're dead. And I said, I asked him, once the aircraft was gone, I could hear, right? Because when it was hovering 40 feet above us, I couldn't hear anything. Well, this ship was, all the alarms were sounding like it was major emergency on board this ship. And I thought immediately as an EMT, I was like, this is not safe for me to be on the ship while it's in an emergency state. I said, I need to make it safe somehow. And I asked the captain, I said, what are those alarms? And he said, the ship is breaking. He said, the ship is sinking. And I was like, great. So

So at this point, the helicopter is in the water.

And they're down in the water. Yeah. And I'm I'm kind of ignoring it for a second because, you know, I narrowly survived getting my head lopped off. And now I'm trying to deal with what's going on on this freighter because it's alarm bells are going off and the captain's freaking out. I did look back out later. I saw two Coast Guard guys on one side of the aircraft, one Coast Guard guy on the other side of the aircraft. They all had retro-reflective helmets. They all inflated their life vests, so they had survival orange and retro-reflective life vests on. We had another helicopter right above us and they were on that scene picking those guys up right away. So again, I compartmentalized what was going on out there because I was dealing with a new emergency aboard this ship.

So I thank gosh, that helicopter was there, I guess, then they had taken off. That's crazy.

So, yeah, an angel on our shoulders. That's for sure. Those. So their their story is an amazing story as well. Like they they witnessed a crash, right, which is intense to watch. And they're piloting their own craft. So. They called out a Mayday right away and As I was talking to the ship's captain, I asked him for a radio. He gave me his and I radioed a Mayday as well. I got word back that, you know, they were already aware that the Coast Guard aircraft was in the water. You know, they were glad to hear that I was on board the vessel because they didn't know where I was at the time. So I was missing in action for a moment. I maintained radio communications with the Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley while they were just kind of station keeping nearby trying to stay out of the huge surf, stay away from the huge rocks and mountains. I did see the other helicopter, you know, making hoists, picking guys up, but they departed the scene pretty quickly, which as a rescue swimmer, I was prepared for that throughout my training. I was told that, you know, based on weight, fuel, time on scene, it's oftentimes rescue swimmers are left on the scene so that they can bring survivors to safety. And that you know to expect that and I so I wasn't really surprised or scared or worried But I was worried about this vessel while I was standing on it We were getting hit with 40 foot waves breaking surf over the top of this vessel Water starts pouring out of all the cargo holds that were full of soybeans So it's this vessels taking on water. And so while I'm standing on it the lights go out on just half of the ship, the half that I'm standing on. And I thought that was odd. Two minutes later, like a sonic boom shook the ship. It was like, boom! And I'm still standing on it, well, After that sonic boom, I was looking back on the vessel and it was just bending, the back of it was like bending off. And then two minutes after that, you know, I saw it like bending, the back half of the vessel broke off the ship and sailed away. It had smashed against the rocks and And it was still powered. That half had the generator. My half had no power. And it was now lighting up the waves that were coming right for us. And we were just hanging on by an anchor chain. And we definitely started to sink lower into the water. I was concerned. So I grabbed a life raft that was stationed on the vessel of the ship, and I hide it down to where we were hunkered down on the bow. Well, the waves were so big that every time they would hit, the life raft would get hit and it would float in the waves. And I would make sure to secure it. I would pull the rope in as tight as I can, secure it to the deck. But one of the waves that hit the ship, it broke the line that was holding the life raft and the life rafter just drifted out to sea. I made that radio call out. I said to the Alex Haley, I said, I lost my life raft. And then I did ask Brooke, Before we crashed, while we were doing hoists, there was a C-130, a Coast Guard cargo aircraft that was flying around the scene. And I asked if they would be available, maybe if they could drop another life raft, because that was my day job, was like, I would pack parachutes and pack life rafts for these cargo aircrafts so that they can drop them to people that are in danger. So they said, that the C-130 had left and that it was going back to Kodiak because air station Kodiak had launched a helicopter to come and pick me up but they were four hours away. So, yeah, I'm out here with the last remaining survivor of the ship, the captain, and we were just kind of hanging out, just kind of waiting. Our ship had broken in half, it was sinking for sure, but we were just kind of hunkered down. There was a moment during the night where I was like, man, maybe I should just calm down, you know, like relax a little bit. And I did. I was able to chill the fuck out. And all of a sudden I realized this is not the time to chill out. I need to be ready to go at a moment's notice. And I felt just adrenaline come down. My vision got more acute. My hearing was more sensitive. I just felt ready. you know, more ready. And I maintained that until that smaller aircraft returned to scene. It took them, it took that smaller aircraft four and a half hours to come back on scene. And when they came back on scene, they tried to put the rescue basket down from 200 feet above the vessel. Normally, like I said, 35 feet, 40 feet is normal. But they had just seen us crash. So they didn't want to crash. So they're up there at 200 feet trying to put this rescue basket down. They only have 220 feet of usable hoist cable. It takes them forever to get the basket down. Eventually, the basket lands on the deck right behind us. I shove the captain in the basket and up he goes on a roller coaster ride. They were about 100 feet above the vessel at that time. I watched him go up and he's swinging like crazy. It was just a wild, wild ride. So I'm holding on. waiting for that basket to come back down. I'm looking out at the ocean and it starts snowing. Snow starts falling sideways. This is December in Alaska. I'm like, great. It was not funny.

That's crazy that the whole part of the weather and the temperature of the water like that, you don't even haven't even talked about that. That's a whole nother element.

And the darkness as well. What happens in Alaska is like in the wintertime, we get this really late sunrise. 11 a.m., we get a sunrise and a really early sunset, like 3 p.m., we get a sunset. So it's it was pitch black, like, you know, right when we crashed is when everything got all dark and stormy. It was like perfect out of like a uh you know an old sea story so these guys got the rescue basket down right behind me i hop in i go on my roller coaster ride up there as soon as i get below the aircraft greg gibbons um has his boot hanging out of the aircraft Normally on my H-60, I could grab one of the landing gear or an auxiliary fuel tank and I could stop myself from swinging or spinning. But on the smaller aircraft, that stuff's not there. So he's got his boot out the window or out the door of the aircraft. I grab a hold of his boot and I'm like, I knew then I was safe. He pulls me in the aircraft. I plugged in with my helmet. They said, how are you doing, Bean? I was like, I'm mighty fine. They said, good, we're going to use you as our rescue swimmer. We're going to stay on scene and try and find some of the other guys that were in that crash. I said, let's do it. I'm ready. And they did some grid search patterns that they were ordered to do for a while. It was pitch black. This vessel was leaking oil. I think it was close to 500 million gallons or something like that. It was the second largest oil spill in U.S. history at the time. Exxon Valdez in 1989 spilled more. And there was other oil spills overseas that were larger, but this one was pretty impactful as far as how much oil it dumped into the ocean. We couldn't find any of the survivors, so we went back out. So we went back to Dutch Harbor. We landed. We pushed the aircraft into the hangar and Tim Eason calls his wife. He says, Hey, you might hear about this on the news. We're all okay. And he was like pretty emotional talking to her. And I, I realized again at that moment, like what, what we had been through and, uh, operations asked him, Tim Eason, the aircraft commander to go back out again. And he said, Nope. We're not going out again. His aircraft was covered in oil. It was black from oil. And yeah, so we went to the Grand Aleutian. The guys from the other Actually, before they let me leave, I had to go to the hospital and get drug tested. The National Transportation and Safety Board ordered me to get drug tested, so I was screened for drugs and alcohol, and then I got to go to the Grand Illusion where Uh, everybody else was there, um, drinking drunk by this time. Cause like I said, I was, I was left out at sea for four and a half hours before that aircraft even came back. And then it took a while for them to pick me up. So, um, it was a long night for me. I was seasick. I wasn't in no shit.

Like what it's cold.

Uh, yeah, I was, I wasn't, uh, cold cause I was in a dry suit, but, uh, I was covered in oil as well and jet fuel and it was miserable. you know, a beverage for me. I was watching CNN. I was on the ticker right away on CNN and my family called. I got to talk to my mom and she sent a basket of fruit from the local grocery store, which was pretty cool. A couple crab fishermen pulled us aside. They gave us king crab, which was really cool. And I just kind of spent the night at the incident command center. There were some junior officers there just kind of on watch and I just talked with them. We got picked up the next day by Admiral Olsen, the PAC area commander. He flew us back to Kodiak. We got this hero's welcome back at the air station. And I started my tour. I did a press conference right away at Kodiak. And then I went to Anchorage, Alaska and did all my other public affairs like via via satellite. So I was on Good Morning America, I was on the Nightly News. It was actually Peter Jennings' last broadcast before Brian Williams took over and he said really good things about us. Yeah. And I got to go to the sailor of the year, uh, banquet. I got to go to the state of the state address, uh, for the governor, um, of Alaska. I got to do, um, what else did I get to do? I got to do some fun stuff.

That's pretty sweet. But going back real fast to see you were the emergency swimmer. So they didn't care to leave you. Cause they're like, Hey, B knows how to swim. Yeah. Uh,

They knew I was on the deck of the ship. They knew there was one more guy. Well, I don't know if they knew there was another sailor remaining, but. They knew that the rescue swimmer was still there. The story of the 6513, that's that small aircraft that launched off the Alex Haley, is actually pretty amazing as well. They were all awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and they got to do some cool stuff too, like they won some aviation awards and stuff like that.

Yeah, how do you do so? How are they flying like that? You know, with those waves, you know, you're saying even the. on your helicopter, going with those waves for as long as possible before that last one flew all the way up. How did that work?

So they have two altimeters. One just senses barometric pressure that tells them how high they are or how low they are. And then another one is a radar altimeter, which shoots radar up and down to measure how high they are off the ground or off the water. And so they rely on those instruments, you know, and they rely on visual cues as well. The flight mechanic is in the door. He can tell the pilots, you know, up or down, depending on the needs of the hoist and stuff like that. But I tell you this, man, most of the pilots that I flew with in Kodiak were they flew amphibious helicopters. They flew the H3. They could land it on the water. So these guys were not scared getting these aircraft close to the water. Like, you know, people often ask me like, Was it scary or fun to jump out of the helicopter? Well, some of these pilots would hover like five feet above the water and let me jump out. I'm like, that's not exciting. I barely fell out of the aircraft. 15 feet is the minimum before they can deploy a rescue swimmer for a free fall. And like I said, rarely was I at 15 feet above the water. They were always lower than that. They weren't scared. That's crazy. After the crash, I tell you, all the pilots at my unit were scared. They were doing hoists from 100 feet above the vessels and stuff like that. That was highly unusual because it's written in the manual to be at a 35-foot hover above the vessel.

That's some, I mean, those are some massive waves just trying to picture. The Bering Sea in December, yeah. And 30, I mean, yeah, and to for water to come up into the, hit the helicopter, like, I mean, that is, I mean, you were like a little soybean on the boat too. Exactly.

These waves, so there was like these swells, right? Just calm looking swells that were 30 feet. you know, like from trough, you know, from the top of the wave to the trough, just the swells. And they were constant at that time. And then as you got closer to like the mountains and to the shore, like these 30 foot swells would turn into 40 foot waves. You know, it would be a 30 foot swell with like an 18 foot breaking spray on the top of it. It was out of control. There were some amazing photos of it from the Alex Haley. They got some great pictures of the swells and then, but you know, I watched the breaking surf all night long, 40 foot. It ripped a ship in half. Like these waves were impressive to say the least, like huge.

That's what I mean. You could have just been like, well, one of them did knock you over, but like, I mean, geez, yeah, that's crazy how it could just, I mean, the force of of water and that's just incredible stuff that goes on while I was probably eating a sandwich while this was going on. You know, I mean, you don't even think about this stuff.

It's funny to kind of connect, you know, the dots like with what what people were doing, you know, at that time. Yeah, I was really I was really excited to be there. I wanted to be there that I wanted this rescue. You know, there's more craziness that went on. So my best friend Joey was out there. He rescued nine guys and put them on our aircraft. They went back to Cold Bay to pick up another aircrew because they had been flying all day and they wanted to have a fresh aircrew out there on scene to help finish the rescue. Well, on their way back to Cold Bay, their aircraft started coming apart. The transmission was grinding metal and they got all sorts of indications on their instruments that metal was detected inside the transmission. So they land, the flight mechanics check these magnetic uh, chip detectors and they had huge chunks of metal on them. Uh, and the flight mechanics said this aircraft cannot go anywhere because it was, it was chewing up. Um, they had to replace an entire input module, which, um, and they did it in the field, which I don't think had ever been done in the Coast Guard history, uh, which it was a major, uh, maintenance undertaking, uh, So, but the pilots were trying to fight each other. They were trying to fight the maintenance crew to take the plane broken, chewing up gears inside of the input module, back out to scene. But the flight mechanics persisted and won the fight. So yeah, another aircraft, you know, got totally wasted. And yeah, so and mine, mine crashes, sinks to the bottom. gets buried under hundreds of feet of soybeans, and my aircraft has top secret, well I don't know if it's top secret, it has secret identify friend or foe codes, it has gpsp codes on it, it has avionics with some sensitive information that like let's say russians were in the area and they wanted to salvage this helicopter they might get their hands on some of our encrypted communications and be able to like figure out how we're staying silent over the airwaves or whatever. So they had to salvage that ship or they had to salvage that helicopter under a hundred feet of soybeans.

Wow. So what, what, yeah, what does that take? Is that, that's a whole nother crew of just like to, to recover that type of stuff? Yeah. Yeah.

So we hired the coast guard, contracted a bunch of different agencies to help with the, salvage, but we had Coast Guard helicopters out there bringing guys back and forth from Dutch Harbor onto the scene. The salvage operations went on for more than two years and international law says you cannot leave a shipwreck out at sea. That's just not a thing anymore. And this one, this shipwreck is still there this day. It is a permanent reef. Its position gets updated on maps regularly because the sea state in that area is so rough that over the span of more than two years, they were not able to salvage the ship safely. So it's still there.

And it moves. That's crazy. Yeah. That's strong. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's. That's a little scary when you think about a little human compared to a ship like that.

Yeah, this was a Panamax class freighter. It was the largest vessel that you could bring through the Panama Canal, 738 feet, huge.

Oh my gosh, that is incredible. Some of this stuff that goes on, and these people just, you get to live and hear about this. you know, get to tell this story of stuff that is truly like heroic. I mean, there's a lot of people that would have died if, you know, you're not there. And 20 lives were saved.

Uh, six sailors that were in the helicopter when it crashed, they did not survive. They were lost at sea. We, we did search for them. Uh, and this, even the next morning, uh, we had crews out there searching for those sailors.

Man, that's tough. To just be in the elements along with the ocean and the waves and then a broken ship. I mean, there's so many things going against you that The odds of surviving like was I mean, yeah, that's it's incredible that you you're here to tell this. And I'm sure I'm sure getting together with your buddies and this type of stuff still to this day is probably pretty crazy to talk about.

They all. Yeah, I get a lot of respect from my peers. They look at me like, you know, with reverence. So, yeah, and I always buried the lead. We talked about the book, but in the film, The Guardian, it's a 2006 movie that came out with Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Costner. They actually depict like six guys in the Bering Sea, you know, rescue swimmer has to go out and pick them up. And then the helicopter crashes, the rescue swimmers left out at sea overnight. And when the movie came out in 2006, that had only happened once before. So it was really fun to kind of see that movie, The Guardian, as well. It kind of depicted my career in the Coast Guard pretty well, I feel like.

That's pretty cool that they, yeah, that there's stuff out there that they take and then make it into a movie or there's people that just understand the story of what you did. And yeah, when you say, obviously on the podcast, I'll have reels of this and links to this book, but The Edge of Survival by Spike Walker, it kind of talks about your, basically your whole, journey and what we just kind of went over and thinking also, um, back to the side where you had to want to be in the coast guard. Like that's a, we didn't even talk about like that part. And I think that that's something we could talk about going forward and have you back on here and we'll kind of, we'll dive a little farther into your, uh, your previous history about how you even became and wanted to do this, uh, this passion, but. I'm going to put all this stuff on the podcast and they'll have the link to the book. The Guardian. Is there anywhere else? I know you said on YouTube to watch. I'm going to go watch some of this pilot.

Impressive piloting. Yeah.

Impressive piloting. Yeah. That's pretty neat because I can't imagine just watching equipment or watching a instruments, instruments and, and, and then trying to look down while not taking your eye off the instruments. Like, I mean, that's just gotta be like a whole, I mean, my brain's just, these pilots are amazing, amazing pilots that, that it no wonder why you don't feel nervous when these pilots are just five feet from the water. Cause they, they're like, yeah, it's like a video game to them. They can do this in their sleep. Like that's, Stuff's incredible. It's the same thing. They're probably like, hey, Bean, I'm flying the helicopter and not having to stay on the ship for four and a half hours.

That sentiment, yeah. They are always gracious, especially when they have to put me in the water. Because None of them would like to volunteer for that chore. So they're very gracious towards me. Every time they bring me back in, they would turn the heat on in the aircraft, even though they were hot as hell. They would just make sure that I was comfortable.

Hell yeah. That's a support system. Great leaders. Yeah. Great pilots. That's awesome. Well, I loved listening to this. I'm sure when this comes out, we're going to have a lot of people that are really going to want to listen to this because it truly has a lot of passion, a lot of impact. And what you did was you saved 20 lives. And that's awesome. And, you know, that type of stuff, unfortunately, you don't get to hear it all the time. So that's that's what, you know, keep telling this story and keep telling people because it's only going to inspire them.

I love I love telling the story, but I tell like I tell people all the time.

Yeah, I will. No, I appreciate you coming on here. And that is truly, truly incredible. And again, on the edge of survival by Spike Walker or go watch The Guardian. But I would say get the book because the book's going to dive into it the most. And yeah, we appreciate you coming on here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. All right. As always, remember, guys, let's and gals, let's elevate together. All right. Until next time.

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