Safety

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — February 21, 2013 — An 80-foot New Bedford fishing boat with a five-man crew is steaming back to its home port this morning after staving off a leak Wednesday night with the help of three pumps dropped off by the Coast Guard, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

The crew of the Megan-Marie issued a distress call at 6:40 p.m. Wednesday, saying it was taking on water. The boat’s position was 100 miles southeast of Nantucket, said spokesman Adam Stanton.

The Coast Guard launched a helicopter, two airplanes, and two cutters. The planes and the helicopter arrived at the scene at about 7 p.m. The planes dropped off three pumps, said Stanton.

 

Read the full story at Boston.com

 

 

February 18, 2013 — Two months after the Gloucester-based scalloping boat Foxy Lady II and its crew of two were lost at sea, the captain’s father says he still has questions about what may have happened, and how the vessel could have gone down without any signal from its own electronic emergency beacon.

Wallace Gray I — whose son, Capt. Wallace “Chubby” Gray II, 26, and crew member Wayne Young, 50, went down with the vessel — said he still has no answers as to why the Foxy Lady II’s emergency position indicating radio beacon, or EPIRB, did not activate, as Coast Guard officials have said.

The vessel monitoring system, which emits radio signals used primarily for NOAA and Coast Guard law enforcement tracking purposes, indicated the boat was 15 miles north of Provincetown on the night of Dec. 15.

While Gray said that dealing with different government agencies at a time of loss is stressful, the Coast Guard has done a “wonderful job” and has been very forthcoming. But Gray said he’s still expecting some explanation as to why the EPIRB did not activate, and was still waiting for an audio report regarding the sinking.

 

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

 

February 5, 2013 — A New Bedford-based fishing vessel's crew found themselves unable to restart the engine after dousing a fire onboard Monday morning, according to a Coast Guard news release.

The 88-foot vessel Raiders managed to douse the flames with the aid of a good Samaritan who provided additional fire extinguishers. The boat was about 35 miles southeast of Nantucket when the fire broke out, the release said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

 

 

February 5, 2013 — The Coast Guard assisted two fishing boats Monday morning, one about eight miles south of Chatham and the other about 35 miles southeast of Nantucket.

The crew of Capt. R.M. Chace sent a distress call at 1:21 a.m. Monday after the boat started taking on water off Chatham.

"They believe it was from an unsecured hatch, but they're not sure," Coast Guard Public Affairs Specialist Adam Stanton said.

An Air Station Cape Cod MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter and crews with a 47-foot motor lifeboat from Coast Guard Station Chatham and a 42-foot motor lifeboat from Coast Guard Station Brant Point assisted in the rescue, Stanton said.

A dewatering pump, which is used to control flooding, was provided by the Chatham crew, although water had mostly been removed by the time rescuers arrived, Stanton said.

The boat and its crew reached Hyannis by 5 a.m. Monday. There were no injuries and no other flooding or damage to the boat.

 

Read the full story in the Cape Cod Times

 

 

 

 

January 22, 2013 — On Friday, February 22, 2013, free survival training for commercial fishermen will be held at the University of Massachusetts SMAST building, 706 Rodney French Blvd. in New Bedford from 7:30 AM to 3:00 PM. The hands-on training, sponsored by Fishing Partnership Support Services, is conducted by Coast Guard certified fishing vessel safety instructors.

The training program, developed by New Directions Southcoast, Inc., includes:

• On-Board Firefighting
• Man-Overboard Procedures
• Flooding & Pump Operations
• Flares & EPIRBS
• Survival Suit Deployment
• Life Raft Equipment
• Helicopter Hoist Procedures
• First Aid

The Community Nurse-Fairhaven and the New Bedford Board of Health will be offering FREE tetanus, flu and pneumonia shots for attendees and their families from 11:30 to 1:30 at the registration table.

Pre-registration for the training program is recommended.

Registration forms are available at:

• Mass Fishermen’s Partnership office at 114 MacArthur Dive, New Bedford, MA 02740

For more information, interested fishermen may email dmachie@fishingpartnership.org or call 508-991-3043.

 

 

January 21, 2013 — When Scott Higgins first saw 80-foot waves pummeling a small inflatable raft that skipped along the water at the mercy of the furious Atlantic Ocean, he doubted anyone on it could be alive.

"In my head, I was surprised anyone could end up in that situation," Higgins, who is currently stationed at Air Station Cape Cod and lives in West Falmouth, recalled about that day.

But the beaten, drenched and freezing three-man crew clung to the raft as it somersaulted atop waves large enough to swallow it like a minnow.

"A Storm Too Soon," a book by Plymouth author Michael Tougias, tells the tale of the surprise storm off Cape Hatteras, N.C., on May 7, 2007. The book, which was released this month, details the rescue of the three men aboard the Sean Seymour II.

"It's this story about incredible survival," Tougias said.

A few days before the storm, boat Capt. Jean Pierre DeLutz, 56 at the time, along with Rudy Snel of Canada and Ben Tye of England, set sail from Green Cove Springs, Fla., for a transatlantic voyage to France.

 

Read the full story in the Cape Cod Times 

 

 

 

 

January 15, 2013 — The U.S. Coast Guard is examining underwater photographs of what has been described as widespread wreckage of the 45-foot long, Gloucester-based fishing vessel Foxy Lady II, which vanished in mid-December with a crew of two scallopers who lived in Maine.

The wreckage was discovered between Gloucester and Provincetown on Friday.

Photographers from the Massachusetts Environmental Police were in the water Saturday gathering evidence of the catastrophe, which yielded no sign of the two-man crew, Captain Wallace “Chubby” Gray II, 26, and Wayne Young, 50, both of Deer Isle, Maine. Gray was identified by the family as Young’s nephew.

Adam Stanton, a public affairs specialist for Coast Guard Sector Boston, said, “there are several different pinpoints of wreckage,” making it impossible to say precisely where the boat was immediately before it went down. “There are pieces everywhere.”

The photographers from the Massachusetts Environmental Police “dived on several pieces,” and the Coast Guard was studying the photos to get an understanding of what happened to the Foxy Lady II.

 

Read the full story in the Gloucester Times

 

 

January 11, 2012 — The Foxy Lady II, the 45-foot fishing vessel that was reported missing Dec. 17, has been found, the US Coast Guard said Friday.

After receiving several reports of fishing vessels becoming entangled on an underwater obstruction while trawling in areas between Provincetown and Cape Ann, the Coast Guard and the Massachusetts Marine Environmental Police assessed the seabed with an underwater camera and identified the boat at 11 a.m Friday, a Coast Guard spokesman in Boston said

 

Read the full story in the Boston Globe  

 

 

 

January 8, 2013 — Officials are unsure how a 55-foot fishing vessel named Miss Biddle sank off the Fish Pier in Boston Harbor early Monday morning, the US Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard received a report at 5 a.m. Monday of a sunken fishing vessel in the harbor. After encountering the vessel with a light sheen around the surface, officials applied a boom to control the apparent oil slick, said Coast Guard spokesman Adam Stanton.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

 

STONINGTON, Maine — December 22, 2012 – This island community is waiting and hoping for answers about what happened to the Foxy Lady II, its captain and crewman.

“We all really hope we get some answers soon and some closure,” Brad Eaton of Deer Isle said Saturday morning at the Stonington Lobster Co-op. “It’s a real risky job they do.”

Some answers may come from an investigation launched last week by the U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigations.

“Typically after a vessel is lost, there is a formal investigation to try to understand, as best we can, what happened,” Petty Officer Robert Simpson, who is with the Coast Guard’s Public Information Office in Boston, said Saturday.

Read the complete story from Bangor Daily News.