Are you a Survivor?

Have you ever been in a place where you had mere minutes to make the right decision and live or the wrong one and die.
It does not matter where or when or how.
Staring Death in the face ain’t fun!
Sometimes survival comes down to being in the right place at the right time and vice versa or even just dumb luck.
I’ve had a few close calls in life very, very close.

I include a link to a video with tragic outcome.
The raw truth of it?
Someone neglected their duties and men died.
Are you a Survivor?

2009 on the fog shrouded coast of Canada.

m.youtube.com...

FOG. Fog is one of the more dangerous of weather conditions offshore. June is known as “Fog Month”.
Depending on where you are offshore a very large concern is Steamers, big, dark, quiet fast ships.
Along the Channel East of Cape Cod and Nantucket many fishing boats as well as big ships (The Andrea Doria) get rammed or just rolled under with zero chance of escape.

It is my belief that this is exactly what happened to the Scalloper Navigator out of New Bedford in January 1977.

My gut says she got rolled under by a freighter while running to the lee of Great Point Nantucket with a deck-load of Scallops where they’d have put a Drag on the bottom and laid too and cut out in calm water while the storm they were in blew itself out.

I’ll begin here now with a survivors tale of my own.

I forget the year but I was working the deck of a new Heavy Weather Boat named the Kathy & Maureen out of Boston Mass. in the dead of Winter.
We had sailed under Storm Warnings, sustained winds of 34 to 63 kt (39 to 73 mph) or higher.

It was not uncommon for boats of this caliber to do so.
Once we reached the fishing grounds work began, the watch on, watch off doing the mind and body numbing work of what life aboard an Offshore Scallop Boat could be.

I was working the Starboard rail and we had just set the drags back out for another tow. I grabbed my basket and began picking threw the pile.
In heavy weather we set into the Sea’s and Wind and Skipper’s would usually wait until the boys cleared the deck and were safely in the cutting house before making the turn to run back down the tow.

This tow however Eddie, the Skipper did not wait.
Looking back across all those years I can now pretty well pit together exactly what happened that night.
As the Skipper turned to Port away from the weather I believe the drag on my side of boat hung up on a lump or boulder. We were over extremely heavy bottom after all, rocks, hills and valleys.
As Eddie turned the boat she leaned her shoulder into the sea and I hears a loud slap on the hull.
Looking forward I saw a wave coming over the wheelhouse and black water racing along the rail towards me.
Suddenly as quick as a snap of the fingers I was over.
The boat rolled away from me and I watched the rail and the scuppers go by little more than arms length away.
Under the glare of the high intensity over head flood lights shining off the froth of the wave I then saw the rolling shocks, the keel coolers and the zincs on the hull. If the savage tide of this area had been at any other angle I would have been swept away.
As the boat reached the peak of it’s roll away from me I could hear the wheel (propeller) of to my left, Wump, Wump, Wump.
The boat came back at towards me and it looked like I’d end up under it where I’d surely go thru the wheel.
But the rolling shock went by me, again no more than an arms length away and the the scuppers raced by again and disappeared under the water and next it was the rail.
The rail dashed under again and I felt myself rise on the face of a wave like at the beach I body surfed back to the deck.
SLAM, I hit and rolled all around until I got my arm around the tow wire running two feet off the deck from the winch.
I was safe, I was home!!!
How long does it take a boat to roll from Starboard to Port and back? Not long!!! I had been overboard for mere seconds. In my mind it seems an eternity now....








a reply to: PiratesCut

a reply to: PiratesCut
That video choked me up watching it. I know all too well about fog. I live in Nova Scotia and currently sitting a 15 minute drive from Lunenburg. Tragedies like this hit all of us here hard. As for your thread topic, off hand I cannot think of an instance where I truly felt my life was in danger, at least not one I'm comfortable sharing.

Understood!
I did struggle a bit with the OP as a whole but having been born and raised into a fishing community and having spent a large portion of my life at sea on commercial fishing boats this is just a fact of life as you well know.
Yes, it’s A bit tough to watch, it’s even tougher to live.



a reply to: AccessDenied

a reply to: PiratesCut

Does misinterpreting the signs of having a massive heart attack, for several hours ("Time is Muscle", according to the ER doctor) count?

Once I got to Recovery, attending physician said I arrived with about 15 minutes to live without emergency treatment.

You ask a very thoughtful, intelligent question here.
A question of the fear of death I’d not considered myself.....
In my opinion, it sure does count!
Fear of death, wether in actual or mistaken situations is a very, very strong emotion that creates from it a huge driving force in what our actions will be.

Awesome reply!!!

Thanks.....



a reply to: Mantiss2021

Your reply made me think of something.

On an earlier thread an ATS member brought up the subject of current and popular television shows that depict some of the types of Commercial Fishing,
Most people today would probably agree they have seen at least one of these shows.
The point was brought forth that in these shows the editors choose and cherry-pick the scenes shown for the worst of weather conditions.
This is in-fact very true.
The Ripping Winds and Monster Seas bring scenes showing men sliding around on deck etc etc and are the kind of things most people are drawn to in these shows, the raw emotion of it.
After all, boring does not sell news papers right?!?

Let’s face it, calm weather and glassy seas can be and often is very boring.
BUT, it is actually during these periods of calm weather at sea men may and do become complacent.
Men can become less aware of their surroundings, lazy even, making them more vulnerable to accidents or even death.

Forming my first thought on this OP this conversation came to mind and had much to do with my choosing calm yet foggy conditions at sea to use as the backdrop rather than raging wind and waves.
It’s not always that men suffer in the worst of situations when it’s blowing 100+ knots, in seas of 40-50 feet.
Bad things happen, and as this case shows, things can and do happen very, very fast wether it’s a raging or glass sea.
Sometimes boats get holed, pulled or rolled under when least expecting it...
Sometimes we have mere seconds to make a right choice and live to tell about it.

Cheers.......😎






a reply to: Mantiss2021

a reply to: PiratesCut

Yes, it is often that the worst things happen when we least expect them to occur, simply because we weren't expecting anything "bad" to happen.

I know, in my case, that if that heart attack had been accompanied by the classic "elephant sitting on my chest-crushing pain" radiating pain so often depicted on TV and in the movies, that I would have been far more attuned to the danger of my situation, and acted more appropriately.

But the circumstances were so deceptively mundane that I failed to consider the peril; I had just tossed a load of clean laundry into the car, a weekly chore, and had downed a typical fast-food burrito for lunch.

The only indication that I was dying was a relatively mild case of, what I thought, was indigestion/heartburn.


We prepare for the tiger leaping for our throats, we never expect the fluffy little bunny to bite us in the jugular!