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'It was all I could do to hang on': Couple rescued from storm-tossed sailboat

A husband and wife in their late 60s were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard on Saturday after their sailboat flipped about 180 miles off the coast of Grays Harbor, Washington.

WARRENTON, Ore. — A husband and wife in their late 60s were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard on Saturday after their sailboat flipped about 180 miles off the coast of Grays Harbor, Washington.

The couple, James and Joy Carey, bought their 46-foot boat 27 years ago to fulfill their dream of circumnavigating the globe. They were traveling from Hawaii to Bellingham, the last leg of a trip they started 17 years ago after their daughters were grown.

"We had covered about 70,000 miles," Jim Carey said. "One more day to go.”

On that last day, Saturday, they ran into some unexpected bad weather. “After the sun went down, [the waves] kept getting stronger and stronger and the seas kept getting bigger,” Jim Carey said.

Joy was down in the cabin when their sailboat nearly flipped. She became trapped inside the cabin as waves thrashed their boat.

"All I heard was this loud noise from the wave hitting. That woke me up, and I thought, 'Boy that was a hard one,' and then it was just all of a sudden," she said. "I had tons of water coming in and I could feel the boat go over.”

Meanwhile, Jim was in the cockpit. "I grabbed the pedestal guard and just hung on for dear life, and it was all I could do to hang on," he said.

The Careys managed to activate their emergency locator beacon. They had to jump off the boat into the waves to be lifted up to the Coast Guard helicopter that responded.

"Joy went up in the basket first, and they got her out, and lowered the basket, and I got in and I'm going up in the basket looking at the boat and it just really hit me," Jim said through tears. "Haven't seen it since."

The decision to abandon ship was painful, not just because the boat was their home, but because it meant not finishing those last 150 miles of a journey that started so long ago.

“It's not the loss of all the individual things we had on the boat — we had some sentimental things, but all that didn't really count for much — but the situation. Sailing 70,000 miles around the world and having one more day to go," Jim Carey said.

The couple was taken to the Coast Guard station in Warrenton, Oregon and treated for hypothermia. Jim also had to get stitches for a deep gash above his eye after being hit in the face by items that had broken loose onboard.

Associated Press contributed to this report

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