Lost boater off NC coast....

[broncobirdy]

Local news talked about a lost boater that was on a charter fishing out of O.I. this morning. He was a firefighter from Portsmouth, VA. Apparantly he became sick and was lost over the side around 9:00am. This is certainly a tragedy and prayers for the families are in order. Just a reminder the need for EVERYONE to be careful!

http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=2003093

[NewMoon]

Heard from my Dad last evening that the firefighter became very seasick and was last seen vomitting over the side, nobody was watching him and he must have fallen over. Tragic! Prayers go out to him and his family

[trouty]

You never been so crook - you'd sooner jump in than stay on the boat?

How come they didn't reverse their course and pick him back up?

How long between when he went in and was missed?

Capt's responsible for ALL his passengers & crew!

Happens a lot more than we would believe - not always they fall over either - folks a been known to push someone before today!

Cheers!

[First Light]

Hey Trouty - tell us something we don't know.

[feralcat]

Thing that strikes me as odd, is that if someone's heaving over the side, human nature is such that MORE people will be paying attention to him; not fewer.

I'm sure you've all seen it on your boat, or a charter, or whatever -- a guy or girl starts yakking, and his buddies will come up, and say comforting things and offer a million different suggestions....

Very odd. OTOH, maybe the guy was ashamed of getting sick, and snuck off to the stern, while the mate was showing the rest of the charter something in the cabin?

[trouty]

My point I guess is..

That even travelling at say 20 knots and someone falls over, for them to become "lost at sea" means - they werent "miissed for a heck of a while afterward - eg - at 20 knots for half an hour - 10 Nautical miles and the same time to get back = 1 hour....

Hell you can almost 'see' 10 nm at sea....so how long before he was 'missed'?

I've been on boats up to 65 ft...and I don't think I've gone 10 mins without 'seeing' everyone on board, so "when did they notice" they had someone missing/ Back at the dock when everyone left and there was one car left in the carpark?

Hey - it does happen, usually while travelling and someone goes to the transom for a leak (or in this case to yodel at the fish god 'Ralph')...

Question....

If he was wearing an inflatable vest would he have been found alive?

If he had a personal epirb in his pocket would he have been rescued in time?

Lots of if's...

Maybe he wanted to ned it all and just jumped?

Will we even know - with the amount of boat traffic on your waters, all on autopilot, likely he was run over 5 mins later!

Cheers!

[proline2]

Trouty, the boat was 38 miles off the coast.* Your comment that he was probably run over is beyond stupid.* Aren't you late far an Anti- America rally??

Back to the subject, If the guy was seasick, it must of been a little rough.* Unless everyone was sleeping, It seems odd that a guy could go missing for any period of time without someone noticing.* Any boat out there that far should have GPS and be able to backtrack right over where he fell out.* Must be a little more to the story.*

[ndb8fxe]

With a rough ocean and any current even backtracking on GPS would leave little hope for finding someone that fell over. GPS wouldn't take you to the MOB, but would take you to where he fell over. Even if as little as one minute went by I think it would be very difficult to find a MOB without flotation. Ever notice how easy it is to loose sight of debris while fishing?

Just a thought.

[alvispollard]

Was booze involved? How can you not miss someone immediately on a fishing boat? We're not talking about a ship.

[auguste]

Please, leave the speculation to the investigators, rather than starting unfounded rumours . . . many people visit this board every day.

My prayers go out to the family. May his soul rest in heaven.

[Lady Jayne]

I agree with auguste. Let's leave it at that and pray that his family has the strength to get through this.

[tprice]

Very well stated Auguste!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[F-15EGates]

We put in beside these folks yesterday at OI and were fishing in the same general area. When the call came out on the radio at 0900 the captain stated that they hadn't seen him for about 4 minutes. They suspected that he went aft to be sick and they didn't notice he was missing until they were going to check their bait. They had been trolling south at about 5 knots and attempted to reverse course to find him. We had 6 private boats and about 15 charters, and eventually a Coast Guard chopper (about 50 minutes into the search) in the area searching for him, but obviously had no luck. I agree it's hard to imagine loosing track of one of your crew for that long, but I'm not inclined to second guess the captain. I'm sure he's pretty torn up. Agree with Auguste, God rest his sole.

[AGULHAS]

perhaps knocked unconscious by the fall and never came back up.

2 yrs ago in the gulf a passenger fell off a cruise ship. they found him a few days later. always hope.

[feralcat]

Here's a newspaper article on the subject:

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories...2759&ran=66494

Interesting...Apparently, it wasn't a charter boat, but instead a private boat
owned by a fellow firefighter?

They did find the poor bast*rds shoes, so they knew they were in the right area.

[sea_slueth]

FWIW......................

This is a thread from someone who knew him.


http://www.some-other-website.com/bo...22115&id=37277

[sea_slueth]

Looks like there is a block on threads being posted from t i d a l f i s h d o t c o m

[trouty]

Was the water cold?

OK so - they were only at troling speed and only missed him for 4 mins...

Say 6 knots (if they were baiting then likely they were trolling slower...

At most they would have travelled 0.4 nautical miles.

After being sea sick, you would be weaker that normal.

But being 24 & a fit fire fighter, you should be able to tread water for 2 - 3 hours without drowning.

When you get into the water the sea sickness subsides fast. (done that).

Somethin ate him just after he took his shoes off most likely, can't take shoes off if you passed out or bumped ya head!

Somethin don;t add up - that much is for sure...

Hell - at 0.4 nautiocal miles - if they just bumped it outta gear he shoulda been able to swim back to the boat hisself!

Strange that the coastguard called off the search the evening of same day he went missing - here they would likely search the next day too.

Maybe Bruce got im!

Everythings gotta eat somebody

Bruce - the white pointer out of the Jaws movie!

Sad all the same for anyone to lose a son and by all acounts a decent young fella too.

Condolences to the family.

Cheers!

[Irish Wake]

Yeah, Trouser Trouty, you sound real torn up about the whole thing. Go back to the outback and watch out that a dingo doesn't eat your baby

[trouty]

Irish

Any boating tragedy - & we should take every attempt to learn something from it to help preserve our own lives..

If it was me lost overboard and ya'll didn't dissect it to take the opportunity to learn from it - I'd come back n haunt ya'll for being so daft!.

Every time we get one of these reports (and you guys get 10 times as many posts of this nature as we do coz your population is 10 times ours), I TRY to get the message thru to folks - that:-

IF they wore an inflateable vest, with a personal epirb in the pocket - we likely wouldn't keep reading of these tragedys!

Does anyone lsten?

You got your inflateable vest with personal epirb beacon in the pocket that you wear everytime offshore Irish?

Didn't think so!

How many times do I have to keep saying the same thing?

Lets take a poll...

Who here does and doesnt have their own inflateable vest with personal epirb in the pocket that they wear each time they go offshore?

Simple yes or no?

Cheers!