Mark said he was going to swim to it. I didn't say, 'no,' I didn't say, 'I'm with you.' I can't swim too well. At that point, I did the back float, he swam, and the next thing you know the helicopters came and got us.
We were playing for keeps. We didn't say that we were. We didn't say, 'What are we going to do now?' We just went for it.
You train for these events routinely, but when it happens you don't know how you're going to react. Mark and me, as a team, we did well.
We just went for it, we knew that we had to do it, we maintained our composure.
The propeller sputtered and that was it ... we recognized it was an emergency.
[It] was the worst thing happening at the worst time in the worst environment.
It was great. The helicopter came over - and then I was inside. The worst was over. They were just phenomenal.
As we were coming in, we decided to stay straight and level. This would give us the most time to try and restart and also it made more sense rather than try to get to land — that could jeopardize somebody in a building, somebody in a car. We don't need to bring others into it.
The propeller sputtered, undulated and sputtered again.
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