The story Not Without Hope starts off on a perfect day in Florida where four friends, Nick Schuyler, Will Bleakley, Marquis Cooper, and Corey Smith, all get together to go on a fishing trip about 70 miles from the Gulf of mexico to a shipwreck site where thousands of fish live. Marquis had been fishing there many times before, in fact, he had just went last weekend with Corey and Nick.
Knowing that a storm was going to be rolling in later that afternoon, they planned to leave early in the morning and return that afternoon with plenty of time to spare before the storm, but not everything went as planned. Upon heading out to the Gulf, they were able to collect ample amounts of bait fish in order to catch the larger fish that they were planning on getting later that day but sadly, not everything happened as planned. Nick got sick and started throwing up so he put on his sweater and jacket which probably ended up saving his life in the end. When they got out to the Gulf and started fishing, they dropped down the anchor so they wouldn’t float away.
When they saw the storm clouds starting to come in and the frequency of the waves start to pick up, they decided that it was time to start to head back to shore, but when they tried to pull up the anchor, it wouldn’t budge. Even all four of these athletic guys together couldn’t get it to move and Marquis didn’t want to cut the line again because that is what they had to do last week, which is a $200 expense every time. This ends up becoming their fatal mistake.
Will suggests tying the rope to the back of the boat and gunning it, which brought down the back of the boat, making it capsize. All four of the men survived this and were able to get back to the overturned boat, but they had nothing at all - no life vests, no water, no food, no phones, and no help - the only things they had were each other and salt water. Nick, Marquis, Corey, and Will all held on to each other for dear life. Who knew how long it was going to take before somebody found out they were missing? How long would it take for someone to find them? Would they ever see their loved one’s again?
Questions started to pour through their heads. The four tried to flip the boat over with no luck. Will knew that if they didn’t get the life vests before sunset, none of them were going to survive through the night. Not knowing where things were put and having to be under the boat with their eyes open underwater was a daunting task. After multiple attempts, Will was able to come up with three life vests, a floating seat cushion with straps, and cooler that had lost all of its contents, but was a good flotation device.
Giving the life vests to everyone else and putting the seat cushion in himself, they all turned to face the night. With ten to twelve foot waves bashing them from all directions, they held on to each other and tried to talk but had to shout over all of the waves. Marquis started to show signs of leaving. He started to fight back, wouldn’t respond when talked to, and seemed to start to be giving up.
After a while, Nick had to lay him across his lap, keeping him from fighting, falling off, and drowning. After hours of this through the night, Marquis died. As Marquis was a the final minutes of death, the same symptoms started to happen to Corey. He was losing his mind, saying things that he would have never said if he was in good health.
With Marquis having died in his lap, Nick didn’t want to let go of him but knew he had to because Will needed help holding on to Corey. Slowly, he let Marquis’ body float away into the ocean, not wanting to accept the fact that he had truly gone.
After a long battle with Corey, he lost him. Corey swam out in the middle of the ocean, screamed, took off his life vest, and gave up his life. The waves were too harsh to risk going that far from the boat to save him.
This left only Will and Nick. For the next day, they were talking with each other and constantly asking each other if they were losing their minds. At one point, they both hallucinations and thought they saw land, decided to swim out to it, but lost too much energy in such little time that they decided that they had a better chance of survival if they stayed on the boat.
As night fell with no rescue, Will knew that they needed some food and water in order to have a chance of surviving another night, so after many attempts of diving underneath the boat to find supplies, he surfaced with a small bag of pretzels and a bottle of Gatorade. Drinking half of it himself and giving the other half to Nick, they both ate some pretzels until a wave hit them by surprise and ruined the pretzels.
At times, they thought they saw a squid or octopus and possibly even sharks. Diving under the boat had drained all physical strength left from Will, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it through another night so he used all of his strength to try their last hope. During the night, Will died in Nick’s arms. Letting go over Marquis was hard, but letting go of Will was even harder.
He was now all alone. After 43 hours on an overturned hull of a boat, rescue comes and Nicks survives, thanks to his strong will power, perseverance, courage, and the gift of life from his best friend.