Why can't you ditch your aircraft in the sea?
The writer was dramatizing things a bit maybe, it's possible to ditch a jet fighter and survive, however your chances are much better ejecting. 

Ditching is an option for any aircraft, with some airplanes ditching is the only option if there's a loss of power over water, for example commercial jets have no mode of egress other than the doors. I fly light single engine aircraft and the majority of the time I have no parachute, if my engine throws a rod over a big body of water that's where I'm going to go, and even if I had a chute I'd probably elect to ditch anyway. It's survivable, and many cases people do. The "Miracle on the Hudson" is a famous example, they even made a movie about it, but there are many others where a reasonable percentage of people on board survived. 

You are proposing a low speed ditching in a fighter airplane, which has a number of drawbacks:


Ditching speed: You can't stop an aircraft by raising the nose higher because at some point you will stall the wings, and they will lose lift. A wing requires smooth airflow to create lift, if the airflow separates from the top surface of the wing it will stop flying, a condition known as a wing stall. In a jet that speed will likely be in excess of 130 knots (150 mph), and there's nothing you can do to slow it further than that. At that speed water cannot get out of the way fast enough and is very, very hard, not some sort of pillow which will cushion an impact 
Slow speed controllability: Fighter jets are designed for high speed maneuverability, not low speed flight, fly too slow and you can lose directional stability and control 
Loss of hydraulics: most fighters have assisted controls which require engine power for the pilot to operate easily, lose power and they lose effectiveness even with auxiliary power being generated
Unknown sea conditions: Sea conditions can have an enormous impact on ditching survivability, the successful ditchings I can think of were in relatively calm conditions where the pilot was able to make a good, even contact with the water. Dig a wing in and the drag will swing the airplane around, most likely breaking it up. It's very hard to gauge sea conditions from any sort of altitude; what looks calm from 5,000ft up could very well be heavy swells once you're close


So what you are suggesting is that a pilot skims the surface of possibly high seas, bleeding off speed in an airplane with progressively degraded control authority - which is also on fire. It's possible, but highly unlikely to work. 

The most critical reason the pilot in the tale you linked to had to escape the aircraft was that a fire in the engine would melt the linkages for the rudder and elevator controls in the tail, or cause a catastrophic structural failure long before he could have ditched, causing a total loss of control. There's no chance that would have been survivable.