When a man goes down in Destin, local folks don't hesitate to come to the rescue.
"I looked up and he was there. He was my angel today," said Stan Lauderdale, who was in the water clinging to the bottom of his 10-foot Zodiac boat that capsized around noon Monday when Mark Broome of Power Up Watersports came to his rescue.
"He didn't waste anytime," Lauderdale said of Broome.
Lauderdale was cruising around Crab Island doing business as usual, Davy Jones' Locker, selling T-shirts, caps and koozies, when the weather took a turn for the worse Monday.
With the wind blowing at 30 mph, Lauderdale tried to make a run for it back to Marler Bayou where he keeps his boat.
"I saw the storm moving in and intensifying. I thought I had beaten the worst of it," Lauderdale said, as he tried to get closer to shore. "The water was so bad and when I saw it come over I knew it was goodbye … so much stuff going everywhere."
Casey Jones, who parks his Big Red Truck at 101 Calhoun Ave., saw it all go down, literally.
"The bow dipped into a wave and spun it around," Jones said. "The wind caught the sign and flipped it."
Jones said that Mark was already out on the water moving their boats around and securing them due to the weather.
"It all happened so quickly," said Derek Gross, one of the owners of Power Up Watersports. "Mark went out and helped get the boat up right and got him back in safe."
"They were very heroic," Lauderdale said of the guys from Power Up.
When the boat went belly up, Lauderdale was hanging on and at the same time trying to hold his legs under the boat to keep things intact. "I could feel things floating past my legs," he said.
"My first thought was my orange box," Lauderdale said, noting it held his phone and important paper work.
He informed Broome who had come to help that he was OK and asked him if saw the box.
Broome did see it and was able to retrieve the orange box.
However, the box that didn't make it was his cash box. But after a search Tuesday morning, one of his buddies found the cash box with 80 percent of the money intact.
"I had everything bungeed down, but it didn't last," when he was overtaken by the water.
"But I've got my life and my boat."
They were able to pull the boat to shore and recovered several of his T-shirts which he keeps in zip-lock bags.
"Really nice people … only in Destin," said Lauderdale expressing his thankfulness time and time again for all those that assisted.
"I'm very grateful to all that helped. I had God on my side for sure."