A 63-year-old man was swept out to sea early Monday while swimming off the coast of Babylon, New York, but managed to tread water for five hours before being rescued, authorities said.

Dan Ho of Copiague was miraculously pulled from the water near Long Island after tying his T-shirt to a broken fishing pole he found and waving it in the air, the Suffolk County Police Department said in a statement Tuesday.

Two passing boaters, identified as Jim Hohorst and Michael Ross, spotted Ho and got him onto their boat, roughly 2.5 miles from where he first entered the water around 5 a.m. that morning.