It was pitch black on the second night of Nathan and Kim Maker’s ordeal when, with hopes of rescue dwindling fast, they were finally forced to have the conversation they’d been dreading.
Suffering from exhaustion and dehydration after being lost in the Gulf of Mexico for nearly two days when a scuba diving expedition went terribly wrong, they feared death was imminent.
The couple had already been through the agony of seeing a coastguard plane scanning the sea multiple times, then disappearing over the horizon after failing to locate them.
And as Nathan began to hallucinate about his dead father, the Makers had to face reality; they were not going to survive this.
‘Nathan has diabetes and takes medication for his heart and we both knew that if one of us was going to go first, it would be him,’ recalls Kim. ‘If he died, I was supposed to cut the tether we’d made that was binding us together and just let him go.
Nathan and Kim Maker became lost in the Gulf of Mexico after a scuba diving expedition they were on went terribly wrong
‘But I had no interest in surviving without him and I had a plan. As dark as it sounds, if Nathan had died, I was going to take off my diving gear, letting myself drown and go with him.’
Her intention echoed the plot of the 2003 movie Open Water, where a scuba-diving couple get left behind in shark-infested waters and the wife takes off her kit and allows herself to slip under the waves after her husband is killed.
The film was based on the real-life case of an American couple who were unintentionally abandoned off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in 1998. To this day, their bodies have never been found.
No wonder Kim, 44, is tearful as she recalls their harrowing experience, struggling to stay alive in the choppy, grey seas some 20 miles off the coast of Texas.
As they relive their trauma exclusively to the Mail, her burly 6ft 4in husband, 49, is equally emotional.
‘If either one of us had been out there alone, we wouldn’t have made it,’ Nathan says. ‘We didn’t give up. We fought together. When I was weak, she was strong, and vice versa.’
Theirs was a terrifying encounter – every holiday maker’s worst fear – but ultimately an example of the astonishing resilience of the human spirit, as well as testament to the power of teamwork and love.
Experienced scuba divers, the couple were on the last day of a three-day trip on a charter boat to explore one of the dozens of decommissioned petroleum platforms that have been converted into marine habitats. These artificial reefs now support nearly 200 species of fish.
The group of 18 divers and eight crew set off from a beach at Freeport, Texas, on July 24 at about 7am for their final dive, but Nathan and Kim became separated from the group underwater around 10.45am.
Strong currents pushed them away from the line that divers use to get back to the boat. They surfaced and inflated their ‘surface marker buoys’ designed to make divers visible from a distance.
‘We were about 150 yards behind the boat, and they didn’t see us,’ explains Nathan. ‘The boat was moored but the current was taking us. It was too far to swim to the boat because the current was so strong.
‘We both thought that once they realise we’re missing, they’ll call the coastguard.’
But while the alarm was raised, strong currents took them ever further away.
‘An hour went by and then another hour,’ recalls Nathan. ‘The boat is out of sight at this point, and we don’t see another vessel until two days later.’
The Makers suffered from exhaustion and dehydration after spending nearly two days floating in the water waiting to be rescued
Nathan and Kim met online 12 years before their ordeal and were both experienced scuba divers
A retired fireman, Nathan says it was because of his training that he knew how important it was to stay calm. He fashioned a makeshift strap out of diving gear to ensure he and his wife didn’t get separated in the waves.
As they drifted they were elated when they saw a search and rescue plane, about a mile away, confirmation that a massive search was underway.
‘We were so excited to see them, even though they were a way off,’ says Nathan.
The plane had radar on board and a computer that would calculate a search area based on where the couple were last seen, drift patterns and weather conditions.
‘We assumed that they’d eventually get to where we were at. We weren’t panicked and just thought we’d have to wait a little longer,’ adds Kim.
But the hours dragged on, the weather worsened and it started to get dark. The coastguard plane disappeared. They were now alone in a sea with swells of up to 9ft and winds of 30mph.
Luckily, Nathan and Kim had each other. They had met online 12 years before and as Nathan puts it: ‘We just clicked immediately. It was – it still is – a big love story.’
Kim moved from her home in Texas to join Nathan in land-locked Edmond, Oklahoma, and the couple married six months after their first meeting.
Fixtures of their small community, Nathan now works in the construction business and Kim is a special needs teacher at a local school.
They discovered diving on their honeymoon in Cozumel, Mexico, and became addicted, racking up more than 500 dives.
Both are optimists, Nathan says, and their shared outlook was vital in the water.
‘We were starting to get cold and shiver so we started doing little sprints of swimming to warm ourselves up,’ he recalls. ‘We tried to make a game of it. We were telling each other jokes, trying to keep our spirits up. My wife was singing songs that she remembered from when she was a little kid.
‘We were super-scared, don’t get me wrong, but we’d do a series of 30 kicks, then take a one-minute break, then another 30 kicks.’
Kim says the plan was to head for an oil platform whose lights they could see in the distance. They didn’t know if people were there, but knew it would still provide them with shelter and respite from the weather.
‘We swam for about nine hours, aiming for that oil rig,’ adds Kim. ‘Nathan made it into a game, and we talked about the cocktails we’d have – after we’d drunk gallons of water first – once we were rescued. He was coming up with all sorts of crazy drinks. He set the tone of being calm and I tried to follow.’
The couple believe they got within a mile or two of the platform when a storm that had been brewing intensified, delivering 50 mph winds and stinging sheets of rain. They clung to each other, riding vicious swells. The only advantage was that they were able to open their mouths and catch some rain to drink.
The couple come from a big family. While in the water, Nathan hallucinated that he saw his dead father Dwight (front right)
Kim and Nathan married in 2012 and are fixtures of their small community: Nathan now works in the construction business and Kim is a special needs teacher at a local school
But at sunrise the next day, the oil rig was nowhere in sight, and they realised the storm had pushed them further away from it. Still, the courageous couple refused to give in.
‘We were really tired and thirsty and so exhausted that we each tried to take a little five-minute nap,’ says Nathan. ‘I put my regulator in [the device that allows divers to breathe underwater] and Kim watched me to make sure I wasn’t inhaling water, and I fell asleep.’
He adds: ‘When it was her turn, Kim put her head under the water and saw dolphins.
‘I’d never seen a dolphin before and this pod were so curious. They came right up to us and were swimming all around us. That really raised our spirits.
‘I know it sounds ridiculous because we were in a pretty bad situation, but something about it was beautiful, to have these living creatures be with us. A school of fish also stayed with us that second day.’ He recalls their excitement when another pod of dolphins joined them, this time with a calf.
However, the couple did not welcome shoals of remora, also called suckerfish, which can grow to a metre long and attach to the skins of sharks. Yes, sharks. The Gulf of Mexico is inhabited by 24 species, not all of them friendly.
‘We’d seen sharks on our previous dives, but they were small, not predators. So that wasn’t a big worry for us, but we did hate the jellyfish that were all around and stung us so many times,’ Nathan remembers.
Kim admits there were times during their ordeal when they began to lose their nerve, taking it in turns to give into fear.
‘I would get frustrated and scream out into the night and Nathan would say, ‘Hey, you promised me you weren’t going to give up’ and I would say, ‘Ok, ok, ok’,’ Kim remembers through tears. ‘Then Nathan would get mad because he couldn’t swim as fast as me and he’d shout, ‘I don’t know which direction we’re going! I’m so stupid!’
‘I’d tell him that we were alive because of him. We took turns with our frustration and panic.’
But as a second night approached, Nathan was in bad shape. With dangerously low blood sugar, the couple feared he would head into a diabetic coma.
‘I was regurgitating seawater,’ he recalls. ‘I was trying not to swallow it but with the height of the waves, you can’t help it. We were getting very weak.
‘The sun was going down but we could see oil platforms in the distance again – and we could still see the coastguard plane flying but they were a long way off – so we thought we’d make another swim for it.’
Kim was also in bad condition. ‘I was so dehydrated and hadn’t eaten anything,’ she explains. She had also consumed seawater, her stomach hurt, her feet were painful and her face was sunburned and swollen. Then Nathan started hallucinating.
He recalls: ‘My Dad Dwight, whom we lost a year and a half ago, was standing on the water and he had a set of keys. He said ‘Here son’, and he threw me the keys.’ Nathan says today that he still doesn’t know what the image meant.
‘Could it be that my dad was telling me I was going to make it home? Possibly,’ he muses.
‘My Dad was the best man I’ve ever known, the fire chief in our home town and one of the things he taught me was that you never give up in the face of adversity. You keep fighting.’
He told his wife that he had seen his dead father and remembers saying to Kim: ‘I think I’m fading…’
That was when they had the conversation about what Kim should do if Nathan died.
‘I said to her, ‘I know we don’t want to have this discussion but if I go, you have to cut the tether and let my body go. You’ve got to get rescued. She did not want to hear that. I was trying to be realistic, but I also kept thinking this couldn’t be the end of our story.’
And by some miracle it wasn’t.
By now it was midnight on the second day and horribly dark. Suddenly they heard the sound of a plane flying overhead and it seemed nearer.
Kim flashed her torch, trying to remember the sign for SOS. ‘She was flashing that light like mad,’ says Nathan.
A short time later, they saw a rescue boat roaring towards them through the waves.
‘We started hugging and kissing each other. I’m not exaggerating when I say those guys grabbed us from the grip of death and pulled us into that boat,’ adds Nathan.
The couple’s rescuers gave them water with electrolytes to rehydrate their bodies and wrapped them in blankets, before rushing them towards the US coastguard vessel. The couple were told their relatives had already been informed that they were safe.
‘We were so weak they had to help us walk,’ recalls Nathan. ‘We got a medical check, showers. The coastguards gave us the clothes off their backs. Someone even gave me his pair of socks. They made us a bed but we couldn’t sleep because we were so excited – all we could do was thank them profusely. The men and women of the coastguard are truly wonderful.’
Since their ordeal the couple have been treated like celebrities; their homecoming was particularly memorable.
‘There were over 200 people on our driveway, applauding and holding signs saying welcome home,’ says Nathan. ‘The fire department that I retired from – all the trucks were there – and so were people from our local church and many of the teachers that Kim works with.’
Nathan’s 74-year-old mother Brenda was waiting to hug him. ‘My mom did a little jig and waved her walking stick in the air,’ laughs Nathan. Many cocktails were drunk in celebration.
The couple are still under medical care but have survived remarkably unscathed, physically at least.
Psychologically is another matter. ‘It’s difficult,’ says Nathan. ‘Why were we rescued when other people haven’t been?
‘When we close our eyes, we go back to those two days so we’re going to get counselling to help us work through this.’
Astonishingly, they also say they will go scuba diving again.
Next week, the coastguard crews who saved the couple are making a visit to Edmond to celebrate Kim and Nathan’s extraordinary rescue.
‘It was such an amazing moment when I heard the voices of the guys on the coastguard boat shouting ‘There they are!’,’ recalls Kim.
‘I just started shaking with joy. I don’t think I will ever forget that moment. I hope I don’t.’
She turns to her husband and smiles. ‘We are the lucky ones.’