A city fisherman claims he hopped in the water off Queens to cool off Monday and was pulled by currents for about 5 miles, all the way to New Jersey, before being rescued — but sources say he could be all wet.
The man, who identified himself to cops as Pete Ordane, 34, was spotted by a commercial fisherman and his son in the water about 2 miles off Sandy Hook in the Garden State around 9 a.m. Monday, the Middletown Township Police Department said.
Ordane told authorities that he thinks he entered the ocean around Breezy Point in Queens and “was pulled out by the tide and had been treading water for several hours until he was found by the fishermen” off the coast of New Jersey, cops said in a release.
The tips of Sandy Hook and Breezy Point are about 5 miles apart by water.
But Ordane changed his story at least once, also telling cops that he had gone swimming off Staten Island, a police source said.
“Ordane advised police that he went into the water to cool off,’’ a local source said.
It wasn’t immediately clear when Ordane went into the water.
He also claimed to have been treading water for about 10 hours — yet he showed no signs of being out of breath or exhausted, the police source added.
Ordane lives in Brooklyn and is a regular fisherman who frequently parks his car in the lot outside the guard booth at the Breezy Point Surf Club, a source in the close-knit beach enclave told The Post.
Public records could not be found for anyone by that name in the US.
He was not at his usual spot Monday or Tuesday, the source said.
The boaters who fished Ordane from the water brought him to the Monmouth Cove Marina in Port Monmouth, NJ, officials said.
Ordane was found to be in “good condition” and was released after refusing further medical treatment, the Middletown cops said.
He was given a dry set of clothes and some food before setting off, they said.
Ordain was later found at a local train station, and police subsequently brought him to the hospital for a ”crisis evaluation,” according to a police source.
A worker at the marina told The Post they saw an apparently disoriented man hanging about the area shortly afterward.
The man ended up 5 miles from where he said he went into the water off Queens. Michael Guillen/NY Post“He was totally oblivious. He was a little bit out of it,” the worker recalled.
“He said, ‘Which way to the road?’ and we pointed that way. He went around the back and we said, ‘No, not that way, the other way.’ And that was the last we saw of him,” the marina worker said.
“But if you think for one city second that he frigging went in the water and was in the water all night from Queens and got here, I find that almost completely impossible to believe,” the source said.
“It’s not a good story, it’s a sad story. If you saw what we saw, there’s no way he was capable of treading water for that long.”
The boaters who rescued Ordane wished to remain anonymous, police said.
“We are grateful to the alert fishermen for rescuing Mr Ordane and saving his life. This is a stark reminder of the dangers posed by rip currents and swimming alone or at unguarded beaches,” Middletown Chief of Police R. Craig Weber said.
A commercial fisherman and his son noticed the stranded man and pulled him to safety. AFP via Getty Images“This incident could easily have ended very tragically.”
The miraculous rescue came less than a month after two teenage girls drowned off Coney Island in Brooklyn and two teenage boys also succumbed in the water off Jacob Riis Park in the Rockaways in Queens.
The 17- and 18-year-old girls vanished in the water around 8:10 p.m. July 5 near Stillwell Avenue.
Their bodies were found on the shoreline about an hour later.
About two weeks earlier, two teenage boys were fatally swept away off the shore of Jacob Riis Park.
