HONOLULU -- A life saving rescue at sea after being adrift for days gives a pair of Hawaii men much to be thankful for over the holidays.

However, like many of the dramatic search operations in Hawaii waters, it could have been prevented.

It was supposed to be a scenic trip from Oahu to the Big Island for Luke Harmon on his first interisland sail with his friend, David Alfredo Lugo-Valby, but near Lanai, the waves picked up as their small boat fell apart.

"When we hit the channel, our rudder snapped off the back of the boat. So we had no steering and that's when we knew we were in trouble," said Jim Harmon, Luke's father.

The 24-foot boat capsized and knocked out their ability to talk to friends, family and rescuers about their dire situation.

"The phones all washed out. The hand held radio -- it washed overboard -- so they lost complete communication," said Beth Harmon, Luke's mother.

Harmon and Lugo-Valby drifted in the ocean for a day and a half, losing sight of land.

"Hoping to be rescued, and sometime Tuesday afternoon, kind of just starting to think about not ever seeing anybody again," said Luke Harmon.

The Coast Guard sent up a C130 search plane to look for the missing men.

"We'd been searching six to seven hours, and then in the last 30 minutes of our flight, our engineer spotted them out of the right side of the plane. Then, they shot off a flare and we knew it was them," said Lt. Michael Koehler, with the U.S. Coast Guard.

Harmon and many other boaters harrowing drawn out search and rescue story could have been cut down to just a short wait for help with an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon or EPIRB. The emergency beacon tells rescuers exactly where to look.

"It would have marked their position. We would have found them right away, instead of setting up a long search pattern like the one we did," said Koehler.

It was a happy ending for the pair as they were lifted into a Coast Guard helicopter, but the trip could have easily ended in tragedy.

"The fact they were close to the islands they had a better chance of being seen. They were lucky someone knew they were out," said Koehler.

The Coast Guard said life vests and flares helped save the two lives, but they could have been rescued quicker with the help of the EPIRB.