news-record.com

OCRACOKE ISLAND (AP) — Donald Austin ended his 35-year career with the N.C. Ferry Division by doing something he'd never done before: rescuing people on a sinking boat.

The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk reported today that Austin was captain on the Silver Lake as it made the Cedar Island-Ocracoke run, which takes a little more than two hours, when he saw lights in a channel.

"At first I thought that it might be a reflection," he said about the Friday night rescue. "So I kept on moving. We got closer. That's when we hit them with the spotlight, and that's when we seen them."

Austin saw three men clinging to a flipped 16-foot skiff and two other people about 200 feet away holding on to Styrofoam. The five men from Burlington had been in the 60-degree water for up to 90 minutes.

Two crew members launched the ferry's rescue vessel, and within 20 minutes the men were under blankets in the heated lounge of the 220-foot ferry, cold but otherwise OK.

"They were shivering," Austin said. "They didn't need nothing. They were in good shape."

Such rescues are unusual in the state Ferry Division, spokeswoman Lucy Wallace said. Crews are trained for them, she said, but there probably have been no more than five in the past five years.

Austin, 54, said the men were on a fishing trip to Ocracoke when a swell "busted into the boat, filled her up, and she turned over," he said.

The rescue on Friday was a satisfying exclamation point for his career. On Monday, Austin officially retired.

"That was good," he said. "It could've been worse. If we had no lights, we would've run over them."