Two others bobbed in the ocean off Wai'anae for more than 20 hours before they were rescued after their fishing boat sank.

Today, as residents across the state join families and friends for Thanksgiving, these four survivors will be among them.

They all view life a little differently now and have a deeper appreciation for the people around them.

Perhaps as much as anything else, these survivors will celebrate the singular fact that they are still here.

Kevin Bailey works out during therapy after he almost died when a drunken driver caused his vehicle to crash. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

Kevin Bailey spent almost half of September in a coma and still hurts from the horrific wreck that left him near death, pinned upside down in his demolished Ford Explorer on Kalaniana'ole Highway in 'Aina Haina. He's had to learn to walk again, struggles to write legibly and prays that he will be whole again some day.

He spent his 40th birthday in the intensive care unit at The Queen's Medical Center surrounded by his wife, three children and friends whose love he's come to fully appreciate.

"I'm blessed," Bailey said, never minding that — by his own estimate — his mental capabilities are about 50 percent of what they were before the crash and his physical strength is maybe about 20 percent.

"I used to do 100-pound curls, now I'm doing things with my left hand that I used to do with my right. My writing looks like a little kid's. When I first tried to write (after the crash), it was just scribbling.

"I used to consider myself articulate. Now, there are words I want to use, but I can't find them or I can't get them to come out."

Bailey's life turned on a dime in mid-September.

He had spent 22 years at a job he loved, the last 12 as a cop with the Honolulu Police Department and 10 years before that as a member of various Air Force special police units in Las Vegas, South Korea and Hawai'i.

On Sept. 16, Bailey was responding to a call for help, rushing on Kalaniana'ole Highway toward town when a driver going the other way turned left in front of him without warning.

Bailey instinctively swerved to avoid broadsiding the Honda but caught the right front corner of the much smaller car, sending Bailey's Explorer hurtling into a concrete-block retaining wall. The Honda driver was later arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.

Bailey remembers swerving, but not the impact.

"I was in a coma for two weeks, my brain was hemorrhaging, but they tell me I was responsive. They would ask me questions and I would squeeze my wife's hand."

As the fog began to lift, Bailey tried to tear out the tube that had been inserted in his throat to help him breathe.

The first words he remembers were a doctor's.

"I recall him saying, 'He's aspirating, he's aspirating,' " meaning he was starting to choke on his own body fluids.

The next memory he has is that of waking up in completely unfamiliar surroundings to find his best friend, retired state sheriff Wil Miller, massaging his legs.

"I told him to stop — it didn't look right," Bailey said.

He had no idea what had happened, drifted in and out of consciousness and was finally told by a nurse that he had been "injured in a serious accident."

"They had to speak in very basic language, I couldn't understand very much."

For the next two weeks, it seemed to Bailey that whenever he woke up, his wife, Maryrose, or Wil Miller, or his two best friends from the police department, KC Melvin or Sam Johnson, would be there.

"The key thing, I think, is to have family or friends around."

Bailey said he had pondered "my own mortality before," realizing there were inherent risks in his chosen career.

"This whole thing has traumatized my family and friends more than me."

When Bailey felt well enough, his wife brought their three children to the hospital to see their dad for the first time in nearly three weeks. His 6-year-old son and namesake, Kevin Jr., took it the hardest.

"He told his mom later after they had left the room that he had to try as hard as he could not to cry around me, that he had to be strong for me," Bailey said, his own eyes glistening. "I try to give him more attention."

Bailey is home now at the family townhouse in Makakilo and goes to physical therapy for two or three hours at a time three or four days a week. He has good days and some not so good.

"I think I'm doing OK and then we do a logic or a memory exercise and I see my shortcomings. What I want most is to get back to where I was," he said.

The one thing Bailey said he has learned since the crash is exactly how much his family and friends mean to him.

"I feel they mean more to me now, I mean I appreciate them more. When you're at your lowest low, they come around."

Help is on the way

In the first moments of his survival after that Saturday in October, when Davy Sanada knew help was coming and the shark was gone, he felt a sense of relief. He would live.

Davy Sanada, badly hurt by a shark, says he is grateful for the support of so many. "I appreciate my family and friends more than ever now." Advertiser library photo • Oct. 19, 2004

But something else fuels his thinking now, something more than relief, something he can't quite touch, yet knows he can count on when he needs to: The love and support of friends and family who have nurtured his recovery in a hundred different ways.

"I guess you don't realize how many people you touch until something like this happens," Sanada said. "They come and give you their support. They take time out of their lives. That is when you realize how much you appreciate them. I appreciate my family and friends more than ever now."

Sanada had gone spear fishing Oct. 9 off east Moloka'i and was swimming to shore through murky, shallow water when the shark appeared just outside the Kupeke Fishpond.

It latched onto his left shoulder, a large toothy shadow, and shook him violently. Then it released him.

Sanada, a 34-year-old shipyard worker from Kane'ohe, stood up in the shallows and saw that the shark was coming back. He jabbed it with his spear gun, which was uncocked but still effective enough to chase it away.

He was able to get to the rock wall of the fishpond with the help of a nearby kayaker. Someone called for help. And friends on shore did what they could to stop the bleeding.

The shark bite claimed at least a third of Sanada's shoulder muscles. They won't grow back, he said. Moving the arm requires great effort and the wounds are still healing.

"My shoulder now is a bunch of scar tissue and it is getting stiff," Sanada said. "We have to stretch it out and get the range of motion along with the strength and see how far we can get with that."

Daily physical therapy may bring full recovery. And it may not help at all. Sanada won't know for weeks if the muscles are responding, which is why the support he's received has proven to be inspirational.

His recovery has also included writing thank you cards. Each one has been an emotional experience, Sanada said. Gratitude can be difficult to explain.

"I'm not an emotional kind of guy and it is hard to express a lot of those things," he said. "I hope they know that I truly appreciate them."

Sanada doesn't think about the experience — "It's done. It is water under the bridge" — and instead focuses on recovering enough mobility to return to work at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

He wants the rest of his life back.

"The relief of being alive, I guess that kind of wore off when I was in the hands of the emergency people," he said. "But as far as relief — true relief — I haven't felt that yet."

A second chance

As beautiful as it is, the ocean can be an unforgiving place. Veteran Navy sailors Martin Mantz and Gary Chavez have long understood this truth as gospel.

Petty Officers First Class Martin Mantz, foreground, and Gary Chavez stand inside the fire simulator at Pearl Harbor. Both spent 20 hours floating in the ocean off Wai'anae before they were rescued. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

And for simple pleasures. The smell of warm turkey. The touch of family. For a second chance.

Twenty hours adrift at sea can do that.

"For sure I look at things differently," said Chavez, a 28-year-old petty officer first class stationed at Pearl Harbor.

"One of the biggest things I try not to do anymore is sweat the small stuff," he said. "Wasting energy over things I can't change. I try to enjoy life a little bit more."

The same is true for Mantz, also a petty officer first class at Pearl Harbor. He's a single parent raising two daughters.

The hugs are tighter when he comes home from work.

"I see my two daughters now and I look at them differently and they look at me differently, too," the 39-year-old Mantz said. "We go bowling on Saturdays. We do things together. We spend a lot of time together."

The two men were fishing 21 miles off O'ahu when their boat suddenly sank beneath them Oct. 23.

When one of the twin outboard motors died, Mantz turned around and discovered the back of his 21-foot boat disappearing under water. The boat sank in roughly 10 seconds, just enough time to grab life jackets, a flare gun and send out a distress call, Mantz said.

Then they were alone, floating over the depths like a pair of water bugs.

"It's a pretty hopeless feeling," Mantz said.

They tried swimming toward O'ahu, hoping to reach buoys where boaters often fish. They were confident, strong swimmers. Chavez has been in the Navy for eight years, Mantz for 15, so both thought they had the survival training to make it.

But the sun set without any real progess being made and the men began to worry.

Then they got separated in 4-foot swells.

Chavez thought he "was a dead man." He had a locator whistle and Mantz could hear his friend blowing on it for most of the night.

Jellyfish stung them both, but nothing bumped or brushed up against them. Still, Mantz often thought he was going to be eaten alive.

"When you are out there floating at night, there are thoughts that go through your head that you are never going to tell anybody," Mantz said.

The next morning about 7:40, they got lucky.

Chavez was rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter search crew about nine miles off the Wai'anae Coast. Mantz was plucked from the swells by a small fishing vessel about 4.1 miles off Poka'i Bay.

The experience has stayed with the men, an emotional tattoo.

When Mantz hears a helicopter, his mind plays tricks on him: In a heartbeat, he's back on the water, floating, not quite lost, not quite found.

Chavez won't eat anything with salt on it. Not because he wants to be healthy. The taste reminds of him of the ocean.

"I've probably thought about it every day," Chavez said. "I do have this kind of empty feeling. What am I supposed to do with my life? I'm in the Navy now, but now I feel like there is something bigger I have to do."

And if it involves a reasonable risk, Chavez won't be afraid to take it, he said.

"I'm going to take advantage of everything that comes my way," he said. "I am not going to ask questions."

But Chavez, who rides a motorcycle and sky dives, doesn't plan on snorkeling any time soon.