November 19, 2014 — Tuesday, Nov. 18, marked the two-year anniversary of when the fishing vessel Twin Lights capsized, three miles northeast from the coast of Race Point in 2012. First mate Eric Rego, a third-generation fisherman, was on board, along with the late Capt. Jean Frottier.
Rego managed to survive the boating accident; tragically, Frottier did not.
“We had been fishing together for 10 years,” he said. “We were out scalloping. We had only pulled in one load.”
Sitting calmly in the Coffee Pot, a popular hangout for local fishermen, Rego reflected on the ordeal. He managed to pull himself up by climbing on the tangled fishing lines wrapped around the boat. Luckily, the fishing vessel Glutton was nearby, where Capt. Beau Gribbon witnessed the incident. He immediately put out a May Day and rushed to the scene.
“The water was freezing,” Rego recalled.
Gribbon and his crew managed to pull Rego from the wreckage, but the on-going search for Frottier was unsuccessful. To make the experience even more frightening, Rego had just become a new father. His son, Ryder, was only two weeks old at the time, which certainly provided adrenaline for him to fight for his life.