RedactedNarrative: A husband and wife in their late 60s were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard on Saturday after their sailboat flipped about 180 miles off the coast of Grays Harbor, Washington. The couple, operator and occupant, bought their 46-foot boat 27 years ago to fulfill their dream of circumnagivating the globe. They were traveling from Hawaii to Bellingham, the last leg of a trip they started 17 years ago after their daughters were grown. "We had covered about 70,000 miles," said the operator. "One more day to go.” On that last day, Saturday, they ran into some unexpected bad weather. “After the sun went down, they (the waves) kept getting stronger and stronger and the seas kept getting bigger,” the operator explained. The occupant was down in the cabin when their sailboat nearly flipped. She became trapped inside the cabin as waves thrashed their boat. "All I heard was this loud noise from the wave hitting. That woke me up, and I thought, boy that was a hard one, and then it was just all of a sudden," the occupant said. "I had tons of water coming in and I could feel the boat go over.” Meanwhile, the operator was in the cockpit. "I grabbed the pedestal guard and just hung on for dear life, and it was all I could do to hang on," he said. The operator and occupant managed to activate their emergency locator beacon. They had to jump off the boat into the waves to be lifted up to the Coast Guard helicopter that responded.