SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - One of three kayakers rescued after having to swim while being battered by waves on Utah’s Great Salt Lake says he thought he was “a dead man” after his boat capsized.

But Weston Barnett told KSL-TV that the idea of drowning was quickly replaced with the fear of hypothermia due to the lake’s cold water and then a determination to survive.

Barnett was perched on an inner tube he’d brought along on the boat ride when searchers rescued him early Friday morning hours after a companion reached an island and called for help.

The third kayaker was treading water and wasn’t rescued until after Barnett, who he says he wants to go back out on the water but that his mother wants him to hold off for a while.

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