What do you do when you’re crossing a bridge in a 35-knot easterly with driving snow gusting to 40 and two-foot seas, and you see a big unmanned Novi boat drifting toward the bridge?
The lobster fisherman driving across the Beal’s-Jonesport bridge on February 24th did what he said the next person to cross the bridge would have done: he drove to the Jonesport US Coast Guard Station and reported what he’d seen. (Although he answered questions, he requested that he not be identified.)
This Good Samaritan told Petty Officer Timothy Maynard the boat looked as if it were about to hit the 50-year-old bridge. Petty Officer Shirley, the Officer of the Day at the Coast Guard Station was just then walking by the window and saw that the boat had already cleared the bridge, and was half way past the station. The vessel, the 45-foot long by, 23-foot wide Undaunted, was moving fast.
Shirley said he ran and alerted coxswain Tonya Morse, who drives the Coast Guard’s 47-foot motor lifeboat, and the station’s senior officer, Chief Gregory Teagle, then Shirley and the coxswain changed into their dry suits and got under way within 15 minutes.
By the time they got within 10 or 15 yards of Undaunted Shirley said, “It was already in seven feet of water.” The motor lifeboat has a navigational draft of 9 feet. It couldn’t move closer to the stricken Novi boat, drifting toward the rocks lining each side of Moosabec Reach.
Shirley contacted the station to let them know he couldn’t get any closer. Teagle was trying to reach owner Christopher Byers, of DC Air, a seafood firm based in Winter Harbor. Having been told to stay with the boat until Teagle reached the owner, Shirley said he stayed on the scene for probably another 15 minutes, “watching to make sure it wasn’t going to drift any more.”
After staying out on the water in that snowstorm for between 20 and 30 minutes, Shirley said the station contacted him to tell him to return to base “because there was no more we could do, and they had contacted the owner, and he was on his way.”
Unfortunately, because the Coast Guard was unable to reach the boat, it grounded out on a rocky ledge.
Kristian (Chris) Boehmer, of Ocean Marine Insurance Agency, Inc. of Warwick, R. I., said Undaunted had been moored properly, but that the pennant, the line that goes off the bow and hooks to the mooring chain, had broken loose from the mooring chain in the storm and was hanging off the boat.
“We’re lucky nobody got hurt,” Boehmer said, but added that cleanup would be expensive. “Because it went ashore,” he explained, “we’re probably going to spend $35,000 to $50,000 just in the prevention of a possible spill, even though there wasn’t any. There may have been some, but it was certainly a very minimal amount.”
Although some felt the Coast Guard could have done something to stop the Undaunted from grounding, what seemed simple-putting a line on the boat till someone could come and take over-given the conditions, wasn’t possible.
Chief Thomas Rooks, second in command at the station, analyzed the elements of the accident and said, “The biggest thing I see is, it was just a matter of time. If you have a large boat adrift and the current and heavy winds are pushing it, unless it’s in the open ocean, you have a very small window time-wise.” He said, “I don’t know what would have helped other than just knowing earlier, because they got fairly close to it.” He explained that if, when it broke its mooring someone had called right away, they might have been able to stop it. But, he said, “It was just too little time to respond.”
He went on to say that had someone on board been in distress Shirley could have dived in with a line, swam to the boat, and rescued the man or he could have carried an inflatable raft aboard and paddled it to the boat. Chief Teagle, reached by phone in Virginia, said, “We do the best with what we have.” He explained that because the motor lifeboat costs U.S. taxpayers about $2 million, “We teach coxswains to be cautious,” but said, “If lives are in danger, I’ll wreck every engine I’ve got to save a life.”
And, had the situation been slightly different, there would have been no problem. “If the current weren’t working, or if the wind had been 15 knots instead of 30, Rooks said, “we would have been fine.” To the question of having an in between size boat with a shallower draft, given local waters, Teagle said despite having such a vessel, “There are always going to be situations that wouldn’t match.”
Sadly for Byers and Undaunted, this situation was just such an example.
Teagle said, “We definitely feel for the fishermen whenever they suffer the loss of gear or a boat.” Rooks said he thinks of them as neighbors with whom he sits beside in church or works with as a volunteer fireman. He said, “Our boats get damaged, too. We take pride in being part of the community.”