Marvin Mantz was settling in to watch the Vikings game Sunday when the telephone rang in his Center home.

"It was the Navy," he said. "They told me my son (Martin) and a friend went out fishing and had failed to return."

Even worse, Coast Guard searchers in Hawaii already had been looking for 19 hours after hearing a distress call.

"He kept saying, 'There's no way they can survive because of the sharks,'" said Myrt Ecklund, of rural Wilton, a friend who Marvin Mantz called after he learned his son was missing in the ocean off of Oahu. "There was no watching TV, no checking the score."

The second call from the Navy came "four or five hours later," Marvin Mantz said.

Martin Mantz and his friend, Gary Chavez, had been rescued.

"The Coast Guard rescued one, and a fishing boat rescued Martin. It's just a blessing," Marvin Mantz said Thursday by telephone from Honolulu, where he is visiting his son and his two granddaughters.

"I had given up. My feelings are indescribable. There are so many emotions flowing through me."

Even on Thursday, Martin Mantz, a petty officer 1st class stationed at Pearl Harbor, wasn't talking much because of all of the saltwater he swallowed while bobbing in 4-foot waves for close to 24 hours.

Considering the length of the ordeal, Marvin Mantz said his son was looking pretty good.

"He's kind of peeling," Marvin Mantz said, "and he has two cracked teeth and a loose filling from his teeth chattering and crunching down while he was in the water."

Marvin Mantz said his son's mood ranged from hope to despair during the ordeal.

"He was worried about his two little girls. He said, 'I've got to make it. My two girls need me.'"

Martin Mantz and Chavez, a petty officer 2nd class also stationed at Pearl Harbor, were about 20 miles off of Oahu in Martin Mantz's newly purchased boat when one of the motors stopped. When Martin Mantz walked aft to check, he saw the boat was taking on water."

He and Chavez managed to send a mayday call, grab life vests, a flare gun and five flares before they went in the water about 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Hawaii time.

"They fired the flares when they saw boats in the distance," Marvin Mantz said. "They fired the last one just before sunset, when they saw a boat that was close, but the boat didn't see it."

Martin Mantz, 39, and Chavez, 28, who is from Portage, Ind., were separated around sunset when the tide changed.

Sharks never were a problem, Marvin Mantz said, "because they weren't bleeding or anything."

Martin Mantz did remember a whale surfacing near him, and "visiting him for a while," Marvin Mantz said.

A crew member aboard a rescue plane spotted an object on the water early Sunday morning. After the plane made several more passes, a crew member spotted Chavez waving his orange life jacket. A helicopter was called in to perform the rescue.

About an hour later, a fishing boat, the Nani G., reported that it had rescued Martin Mantz.

"He thinks it was a private fishing boat," Marvin Mantz said, "but his memories ain't real good at this moment."

For the Coast Guard team out looking for them, the effort was the team's longest that finished with a happy ending, a Coast Guard spokesperson in Honolulu said. That the water temperature was about 70 degrees and that the day wasn't extremely hot also helped the men.

Both men were treated at an Army hospital and released Sunday after being treated for hypothermia, exhaustion and sunburn.

Marvin Mantz said Martin has been stationed in Hawaii about three years and has been in the Navy 15 years. Martin Mantz will return to duty Monday. He's an instructor at the Navy's firefighting school.

"He has always called Center home," Marvin Mantz said. "He misses his hunting and fishing."

Marvin Mantz knew on Sunday that he would be catching a plane to Honolulu, and he arrived Wednesday afternoon. He'll be back in Center next Wednesday.

His granddaughters, Ashlee, 13 and Brandi, 11, were taking good care of their dad.

"They helped him quite a bit," Marvin Mantz said. "He couldn't get out of bed when he got out of the hospital, but everything's OK now."

(Petty officer 2nd class Jennifer Johnson, of the 14th Coast Guard District Public Affairs Office in Honolulu, contributed to this story. Reach reporter Richard Hinton at 250-8256 or outdoors@bismarcktribune.net.)