SAN FRANCISCO (WKRN) – A Nashville videographer saw his life flash before his eyes when his boat caught water in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Now, he’s on a mission to thank the man who saved his life.

Preston Summerrow, joined by friend, Evert Butler, spoke for the first time with News 2 after a daring boating adventure almost turned deadly.

“We actually thought we were gonna die, like there was a little part of us that was like, this is a really bad idea,” said Summerrow.

Summerrow, once a Nashville videographer for musicians, moved to California to become a YouTube influencer, racking up hundreds of millions of views online.

Little did he know, this adventure would have him dancing on death’s doorstep.

“I don’t know the last time you screamed for help for someone to save your life, but it’s a pretty humbling feeling,” he recalled.

It all started when the two life-long friends built a a tiny boat to row out to McCovey Cove in San Francisco.

The two friends hoped for a homerun ball, or splash hit, from Oracle Park to put their boat on the baseball broadcast.

“The goal was was for us to show the world the beauty in our little tiny boat home, and it was chaos,” Summerrow said.

After making quite a splash in more ways than one, the two have made it on television for a completely different reason.

The goal now is to find the man who saved their life when their boat begin to catch water while out on the San Francisco Bay.

“Keep in mind, that the whole time I’m scooping water out of our boat with a water bottle cut in half,” Butler explained.

The homemade boat was driven all the way from Los Angeles. In a race for time, the boat was never water-tested, until that day.

“When the water started to fill up in the boat, my first thought was, ‘we may not make it out of this,'” recalled Summerrow.

That was until a nearby boater, or Good Samaritan in this case, saw the struggling duo.

“Somehow, our screams for help were heard by a sweet man named Bill,” said Summerrow, “and Bill came to our rescue.”

After their initial rope snapped, Summerrow said Bill tossed them a lifeline, and brought them back to land.

“If Bill was watching this, I would say, ‘Bill, you’re the best of us. I would love to buy you a steak dinner,'” Summerrow told News 2.

As Bill rode off into the sunset, Summerrow and Butler have a new mission at hand, and that’s to find Bill and say thank you.