July 25, 2013 — Anthony “Little Anthony” Sosinski woke up Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. to a panic: His fishing boat Anna Mary was 60 miles south of Montauk Point and his partner and friend since second grade John “Johnny Load” Aldridge was nowhere to be found.
The Anna Mary had set out from Montauk at 8:30 p.m. and Aldridge had taken the first watch as they steamed on autopilot toward their lobster traps.
“I went out onto the deck and started piecing things together,” Sosinski said, “We’d started filling up these lobster tanks with water, and when I came out in the morning I found that the coolers had been moved around and that one of the handles was snapped off.”
Apparently, Sosinski said, Aldridge had been pulling on the cooler by the handle when it broke off and sent him careening off the boat's open stern. When Sosinski first called the Coast Guard, the officers asked if he’d found any sign of a suicide note, but “I knew it wasn’t nothing but an accident,” he said.
The Coast Guard put Sosinski in charge of setting up a 12-boat search flotilla 12 miles long, each a half-mile apart, sweeping up and down the coast to search for the lost seaman. Boats from Massachussets, Connecticut and Rhode Island participated in the search, and even Jimmy Buffet headed out to help.
Read the full story at East Hampton Patch