The long and smooth 7 – 9 foot swells from Florence are rolling into
New England’s shores on a deceptively mild day and handing out some
harsh lessons.

A 21 foot lobsterboat was flipped this morning and the fellow who just
bought the boat last year spent half an hour in the water. Someone on
the shore just happened to glance out their window and spotted the
overturned hull so he lived.

Normally, I get called to these events because, as the Harbormaster, I
am the "Receiver of Wrecks" and have legal custody of the boat until
an owner or representative shows up to claim it. A new dispatcher didn’t
know the drill so I stopped into talk to him after hearing about it
from my son who had been on a beach clean up. While I was there, I
learned that another lobster boat had gone over and someone was
missing.

I went down to the shore to find quite a scene with a 30 – 35 foot
lobster boat upside down in the surf, a USCG chopper overhead, and
just about every rescue boat and team from a 20 mile radius all
searching. The chopper landed a swimmer on the end of a winch cable to
check for sounds of someone trapped inside the boat. He heard nothing
but hope wasn’t abandoned. A hole was cut in the hull and the wreck
eventually hauled ashore by a large wrecking truck

The lobsterman, according to reports at the scene, the father of one
of the crew members, is still missing. Two crew members were pulled
out of the surf by roofers working on a nearby house who saw the
capsized and called it in.

Lost in all this excitement was a rescued kayaker that I never did get
the details on.

This is all a reminder that, no matter how smooth the seas look and
how gentle the wind, whenever your water depth is less than twice the
wave height, there is the possibility that one of the big waves that
come alone infrequently will break on you. On a day like today, these
large waves can kill even a fairly sizable vessel.


--

Roger Long