Their next fear was the dark.

"The first night was awful," John said. "We had lightning and on top of that everyone's initial fear is that jaws is going to come out of the bottom and tear you in half."

Although they made it through the night without seeing any sharks, Rebecca said "the sun finally came up, which is the most beautiful thing you can ever see in the whole world, followed shortly by fins in the water, which is the scariest thing in the world."

Those fins began to circle the three of them.

"Whatever it is, everyone just hold onto the side of the boat, no kicking, no splashing and stay still," Elias (pictured, below left) remembered telling the others.

As the fins neared to within arms reach, they realized they were dolphins, not sharks. A short while later, a shark pup did start nipping at Rebecca's pants, but they were able to spook it.

Their fear of attracting sharks or even barracuda was so great, they were extremely careful when they would grab drinks out of their cooler as they floated.  Their water was floating in the cooler along with their squid, which had become very smelly. They did not want to chance even a drop of that water, dripping into the ocean around them and attracting something dangerous.

"We'd be careful to knock off all the excess water into the cooler before we drank," said John.

Day two

On their second day in the water, they decided to ditch their capsized boat and swim towards an orange tower they could see off in the distance.

"We had all day to do it. We figured it would take about eight hours," John said.

What they didn't anticipate is the ocean's power. Elias, who was using a small cooler they retrieved from under their boat, was moving faster in the water than his brother and Rebecca, who were holding onto the large, blue cooler.

"I was kicking and kicking and kicking and all of a sudden I look up and they are no where to be seen. I couldn't believe I got that far away from them," said Elias.

Pictured, right:
John Nevarez still has the cooler
they used to stay alive during
their three days at sea.

Elias said all he knew to do was to keep kicking towards the tower and hopefully he would meet up with John and Rebecca at the tower. But because of the strong current, they never reached the tower. After 12 hours, Elias is hoping his desire to see his wife again would give him strength to continue kicking. 

Meantime, John and Rebecca think they are close to land.

"So we get close enough to one of the lights and I start screaming, 'Is anybody out there?' and someone replies," John said. "So I was like, 'Shine your flashlight so I know exactly where you're at,' and Elias goes, "If I had a damn flashlight, we would have been rescued by now."

Somehow in the middle of the night, the currents had brought them back together.

Day three

As the sun rose on the third day, all three began to hallucinate.