BODEGA BAY — For the first time since two weeks ago, when he woke up alone and cold on a deserted stretch of beach after clinging for hours to a floating ice chest, the 13-year-old from San Jose went back to pray on Saturday.
Jude Khammoungkhoune’s father held on to the cooler next to him for as long as he could after their family fishing boat sank in rough ocean water on November 2. The six people on board, including three cousins and a family friend, were spread out in all directions.
Only Jude is still alive. He’s had bad dreams about falling into the cold water, holding on to the cooler, and how he and his dad talked about how to get through the night.
Jude said, “We would have made it through this together.”
As the full moon rose over Bodega Bay on Saturday, Yathida, Jude’s mother, lit candles and prayed that all the bodies would be found. They were joined by two younger siblings and about 60 other family members and friends.
Buddhists believe that they brought his father’s new clothes to get him ready for his journey to the next life. Jude got on his knees next to his mother, folded his hands, and joined the monks in prayer.
At a vigil in Bodega Bay, California, on Saturday, November 16, 2024, Yathida Khammoungkhoune lights a candle for her husband and the four other people who died in a fishing boat accident. Her son Jude is with her. Only Jude Khammoungkhoune, who is 13, lived. By Karl Mondon for the Bay Area News Group
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Compared to the day the boat capsized, Saturday evening was very calm, with barely any wind. They had set off that morning from the boat dock, where Jude stood. They were dreaming of a big catch and the crab stir fry his mother would make with ginger and scallions when they got home.
At the vigil, being with his family helped him remember the good times he had with his dad, like when he was 5 and caught his first fish, a striper, and his dad was so proud that he took a picture of him. Jude got cold as the sun went down, but he quickly got warm again.
He said, “I’ve been through it.” “I’m already used to the cold.”
Many people from Jude’s family in Rancho Tehama, northwest of Chico, died when the 21-foot Bayliner that Jude’s dad, Prasong, kept parked in the driveway of their apartment in downtown San Jose sank.
This included Johnny Phommathep, Jude’s dad’s cousin, and two of his six sons, Johnny Jr., 17, and Jake, 14. In a sad turn of events, both boys and their mother Tiffany were hurt in 2017 when a school shooter shot at their car in Rancho Tehama.
“Death came for my sons again after they ran away from it once,” Tiffany said.
Since then, she has walked along the beaches almost every day, hoping and fearing to find signs of her lost loved ones. Others have found the bodies of her 17-year-old son and what seems to be her husband. Still no sign of her 14-year-old.
Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Rob Dillion said it’s amazing that Jude, the oldest son of Laotian refugees, stayed alive overnight in water that dropped to 52 degrees and had waves that reached 8 feet.
I can’t believe this young man was able to stay afloat, hold on to the ice chest, and stay calm enough to know that he should stay put until it got dark.
Jude, whose name is Juladi, is in the eighth grade. He loves to play basketball after school and go fishing with his dad on the weekends. Jude’s dad was a courier and ran his own business. Half Moon Bay to catch striped bass. Bodega Bay to start the crab season.
Last week, he told his scary story while sitting next to his mother in the family home. His dad’s fishing poles are still leaning against the wall.
owing the Bayliner behind them, father and son left San Jose before midnight, and by 4 a.m. that Saturday, they had met up with their cousins and longtime friend Matthew Ong, 42, and were launching their boat into the bay. A small craft advisory had been issued, but all was calm before dawn.
As they motored into open waters, Jude’s job was to keep track of the hoop nets that captured the crabs. They were hoping for better luck on the first day of recreational crab season, but the 13 crabs they caught by dusk were better than none. The sun was setting, the wind was picking up to a brisk 15 mph and the waters were rough as they hauled in the last net of the day from the back corner of the boat.
Suddenly, as they pulled in the line, a wave washed over the rear, swamping the back compartments that held the batteries and gas tank. They tried to motor forward hoping the water would pour out. Instead, Jude remembers hearing the hoop net line snap and the motor sputter as some of the adults scrambled to put on life jackets as the boat sank.
And just like that, he said, “We just went overboard in the water.”
With darkness descending and their cell phones sinking to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, the three teenage boys and three men in their 40s found themselves at the mercy of the perilous Pacific four miles from shore.
Jude and his father grabbed the large white ice chest that was mostly empty except for some leftover chicken and heaved themselves over the top. They quickly lost sight of everyone else.
“We were getting a little bit farther and the waves were pretty high,” he said, “so we couldn’t really see the boat anymore.”
They held on as the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.
“Everything’s going to be OK,” his dad told him.
They held on as the wind howled and the shoreline disappeared in the dark.
“We’re going to make it,” his dad said.
Was it two hours? It could have been four. Father and son side by side, surging up and down with the swells, clinging to an ice chest, hoping to survive.
“I love you,” his dad said.
“I love you, too,” Jude said.
As time wore on and the water roughened, Jude sensed his dad getting colder and weaker.
In one particularly violent crash of waves against the cooler, Jude said, “he slipped off.”
His father said something to him then, but Jude couldn’t make it out. The cacophony of the waves hitting the ice chest and crashing against each other and a seagull squawking overhead were all too loud.
He watched his dad, like his cousins, disappear.
“I was thinking that I was going to die,” Jude said. “I didn’t really know what I was going to do without him, because he was a little bit more smarter than me and knew more survival than I did.”
So with the moon a sliver, the night got darker. By about 2 a.m. the seas calmed and somehow, at some point, with Jude still holding on, the ocean must have rocked him to sleep.
He wakes up falling in the surf the next thing he remembers. It was very dark. He wasn’t holding on to the ice chest anymore. He was only able to stay afloat because of his life jacket.
He said, “It felt like a tsunami.” “I just floatered there and let the waves push me a little closer until I was ready to stand up.” Everywhere I looked, I felt dizzy.
He got to the edge of the water, then fell asleep on the beach he had just reached. As soon as the waves hit, they woke him up. He moved a few more feet, sat down, and fell asleep again. That night, he did this more than once.
He said, “I just kept going, and then I just slept again, until it was morning.”
He had landed on a long, empty beach early in the morning when it was cold and windy. His Nike pants, black T-shirt, jacket, and socks and boots were all wet and sandy.
He saw a U.S. Coast Guard boat right there as he looked out over the ocean to where his father had lost his balance.
“After that, I saw a Coast Guard helicopter and then a Coast Guard plane,” he said. “I was giving them a wave.” I asked for help over and over.
They didn’t hear him, though. He chose to hike across the land and found the Bodega Dunes Campground. When a woman drove by, he called her.
He told her, “My boat sank, and I slept on the beach.” “Would you take me home?”
Instead, she called 911.
Jude got out of the hospital in a few hours without getting hurt. He said that he cried for the first few days at home in San Jose.
There was always someone to talk to at school, so he didn’t have to feel bad about making it through. People have set up GoFundMe pages for both Jude’s family and the Phommathep family.
Jude still doesn’t understand what his dad was trying to say when he slipped off the cooler that night, but he does wonder if letting go was a kind thing to do, and if his dad was giving Jude a better chance to live.
As Jude put it, “it gave me a little edge to get to land faster.”
Jude’s mom and grandma are sure of it. On Saturday, they thanked him and prayed for his safety as they walked away with candles lit.
