A peaceful Sunday evening on the water for Lee County resident Kathleen Baker took a horrible turn.
Baker and her family were enjoying a boat ride near the Sanibel Causeway in the Gulf of Mexico when she realized her dog, a 2-year-old Australian Cattle dog named Eleanor, disappeared.
"It probably been a minute or so and I hadn't seen her. And I looked back and she was gone. Totally gone," Baker said. "I felt like I had a big hole in my heart and I just felt like we hadn't we had somehow let her down."
That's when the mission began to find Ellie. Baker zigzagged through the Gulf for two hours unit they ran out of fuel.
As daylight faded, so did the hope of finding Ellie.
"It was getting dark and we were running out of gas and so we couldn't keep was clean, keep looking for there were very few boats out there," Baker said. "We thought we would never see her again."
About an hour after losing sight of Ellie, Captain Terry Johns was steering the dinner cruise, Sanibel Harbour Princess, when his passengers saw a black speck in the water near Fort Myers Beach.
"They were all pretty excited about something going on, so I went back there and, sure enough, as I looked over the side, to see what they were pointing at, it looked like a little head that was swimming," Captain Johns said.
"Sure enough, it was a little puppy, that was, making its way toward the back of the boat," Johns said.
Captain Johns and his staff stopped the boat and set passengers forward so he could pull Ellie out of the water.
"Everybody was just overjoyed, you know, because we didn't know if, it was going to come off okay," Johns said.
Johns said the Sanibel Harbour Princess almost did not set sail Sunday, due to not having many passengers, but decided to go away anyway to enjoy the evening.
One of the workers aboard the boat, Alex Lanier, took Ellie home with him.
It only took one day for fate to reunite Ellie and her owners.
Ellie's owners compared photos with Sanibel Harbour Princess staff.
"Sure enough, yeah, there was no doubt it was the same dog," Johns said.
Baker drove 40 minutes to North Fort Myers during the rainstorm.
"And there she was. She was having a good time because they had a little mini farm. So she was running around," Baker said. "When we saw her, we were just so thankful. So thankful, and it was just a miracle."
Captain Johns said this is not the first time he has encountered dogs lost in waters. He was a member of the Coast Guard for 33 years and encountered similar situations.
"We had found one in the middle of the ocean, and it became a mascot for us, for several, a decade almost," he said.
However, finding Ellie was a remarkable finish for his last time on the gulf with Sanibel Harbour Princess.
"Luckily, the dog had a little angel over her head that day too," Johns said. "The stars were in a line for Ellie, that night."
Baker said Ellie will now wear a life vest every time she goes on the family boat.
"Even though she's a good swimmer, obviously, I think that would have helped just to spot her," She said. "It was my worst nightmare with a happy ending," she said.