One Wednesday afternoon in January, Robert Konrad hopped into his 31-foot Grady-White fishing boat and motored out into the Atlantic Ocean. The former Miami Dolphins fullback, who caught 111 passes during his six-year NFL career, was 38 years old and well into his second career as CEO of Boca Raton's Alterna Financial. He grew up near the water in Massachusetts and enjoyed the freedom of the sea, so he set the autopilot, cast a line, and tried to hook a big one.
Instead, Konrad ended up with the most terrifying experience of his lifetime. After a large wave knocked him out of the boat — which had been set on autopilot, and motored away at 5 miles per hour — Konrad did the only thing he could do: He swam. Konrad swam for nearly 16 hours, covering nine miles before he finally reached the Palm Beach shore around 5 a.m. Later that day, authorities found his boat near Grand Bahama, 54 miles east of the Florida coast.
It was a remarkable ordeal, one that even Konrad wasn't sure how he managed to survive. "I shouldn't be here," hesaid during a press conference a few days after he returned.
During his time in the water, there were a couple points where Konrad was nearly saved, first by chance, and then by the authorities who were actively searching for him. "In the next 16 hours, I really had two opportunities for rescue," Konrad remembered. "At one point, as I swam into the night, there was a fishing boat, a recreational fishing boat, about 50 yards away. I tried to flag down the boat. It didn't work out. A little bit later on, I saw the Coast Guard (helicopter). They were out, searching the water. At that point in time, they came right over the top of me. They had lights on me, but kept going. That was a difficult time. I realized at that point I was on my own."
"After some time I just said, 'Look, I'm not dying tonight, I'm going to make it to shore.'"
Make it to shore Konrad did, becoming a testament to a human's ability to survive. And while it must be said that at least acoupleoutlets questioned Konrad's claims, which are impossible to verify because he was alone, he certainly went through some massive trauma. A month later, the local ABC affiliate obtaineda surreal video from the night he returned:
"How far out were you?" one voice asks.
"About 10 miles," Konrad says. "I've been swimming since 1 o'clock."
"One o'clock in the afternoon?" the voice asks in disbelief.
"What time is it now?" Konrad asks.
"Like almost 5 o'clock in the morning," the voice responds.
"Shut the **** up," Konrad says, with shock in his voice.
Moments later: "Is there any chance you have a phone," he asks — "to just let my family know I'm alive?"
Konrad called. He was alive. And one seriously tough dude.
Illustrations by Christopher Wright
* This article is part of The Code, an editorial partnership between Esquire and Ford F-150.