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Strange Pickings today. Pickerhead is in the Detroit area with four grandchildren and there’s no time for an ordinary post. And, it is really tiring following the miscreants in Washington. So, today one item that is twice the length of a normal post.
This is a story from the New Jersey Ledger-Star about a scallop boat that was lost at sea two years ago this past spring. After completion of the Coast Guard investigation reporter Amy Ellis Nutt and photographer Andre Malok began a seven month investigation that was published in November 2010. Last April, the story won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. ”The Wreck of the Lady Mary” suggests the possibility the boat disappeared within minutes after being run down by a container ship. Water temperature in the North Atlantic at that time (March 2009) was 40 degrees. Six men perished. One was rescued.
Pickerhead has some familiarity with these waters from ten years ago. It was December and I was running my boat from the Virginia to New York. Teaching a class at William and Mary was the cause of the late departure. Luckily it was still warm and the water temperature was almost 70. However, that caused some fog. Fog so thick I sat over some shallow draft shoals at the beginning of the trip in the James River. Sat over them for protection from larger vessels. Finally when it cleared some it was possible to find the way down the James through the Chesapeake Bay and then up the Atlantic coast. It was possible to see only 1,000 feet or so. Then when it was time to cross the entrance to the Delaware Bay visibility closed to 500 feet.
It is a 15 mile run to cross the approaches to the Delaware River. With the chance the fog would get worse, and even with excellent GPS and good radar, the decision was made not to make the crossing. There are just too many large ships making their way perpendicular to the course I would follow. The night was spent in Indian River. And then the next night because fog was cleared by northwest winds blowing 30 to 35 miles an hour that put up waves of 8 or more feet. The next day conditions cleared. The next stop was New York harbor.
All of this is proof when I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish. In my defense the safety gear (immersion suits and EPIRB) mentioned in the story are carried on my small craft. Both of those items were key to one man surviving the sinking of the Lady Mary. Had there been more than a few minutes, all of the crew might have lived.