Mankamyer Overboard

This whole deal smells fishy:

His sister was preparing a funeral. The Coast Guard was embarking on a rescue.

Michael Mankamyer was 30 miles off Fort Lauderdale treading water in choppy seas.

About eight hours earlier, the 35-year-old Orlando man had jumped from a cruise ship balcony -- rescue officials were at a loss to say why, though they reported a witness said he was drunk. But salvation came at 8:45 a.m., when a lookout on the Coast Guard cutter Chandeleur, Petty Officer Ryan Coon, saw Mankamyer in the fresh sunrise about 75 yards away.

He was shirtless, splashing and thrashing his arms.

What kept Mr. Mankamyer from Davy Jones' locker despite eight hours in the drink? That it was warm out, and as the appropriately named Dr. Rotundo explains:

Another factor was Mankamyer's body mass. As a heavyset man, he was more likely to float than someone leaner, said Richard Rotundo, a professor at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine who specializes in cell biology and anatomy.

"Someone who ... has excess fat, their body density would be less than water," Rotundo said. Layers of fat would also insulate Mankamyer from the cold, the professor added, and help retain body heat.

That mass had hit the ocean's surface like a sack of wet cement under highly unusual circumstances:

An MRI technician at Florida Hospital in Orlando, Mankamyer was on the final leg of a weeklong Caribbean cruise with his 16-year-old godson, Salvie Wega, of Orlando, aboard Carnival Cruise Lines' Carnival Glory. They were scheduled to return to Port Canaveral today.

Around 12:45 Friday morning, Wega's mother, Margaret, said officials told her Mankamyer dashed through his cabin and out the balcony. "They said that Michael went off the side of the ship and my son Salvie tried grabbing him but he couldn't grab him," Margaret Wega said.

Do people just dive off of ships for no reason? And who would send a teenage son to share a cabin with a 35-year-old unmarried godfather? Sounds like more than one person was out their mind.

UPDATE:
Now it now appears they had some kind of fight:

Wega said he was hanging out with Mankamyer, 35, when his godfather had a few drinks at dinner and got upset that he wanted to go explore the ship.

"He starts hitting himself and punching me and I hit him back. I couldn’t take it anymore and I held him down and security came," Wega said.

Wega said his godfather jumped from the balcony of their seventh-story room when he went to answer the door.

"He jumped off the boat because; I don’t know what was wrong with him. I was trying to pull him in and I cut my finger in the window," he said.

Wega said security initially believed he pushed Mankamyer overboard.

"They handcuffed me, they bumped my head -- I have a big bump on my head and they tried to accuse me of murder," he said.

Mankamyer's a neighbor, and I can't tell if he's an actual godfather or just a figurative one. Salvie Wega would have had to have been a toddler when he was christened.
There'll be more coming out on this, I'm sure.