Listening to 16 this morning inshore I could hear the coast guard end of the exchange. 35 foot catamaran capsized and 5 people in the water offshore. Sounded like the coast guard never received the DSC call (nor did I) but told them to deploy the epirb. Epirb probably saved those lives. From the end of the exchange I could hear sounded as if a boat named The Office picked them up within about 30 minutes with no injuries or medical needs. Sounded like True Blue responded to, but again tough to completely understand with only hearing one end of it.
Check and test your epirbs and plbs!
Good on y’all for monitoring your radios and responding quickly!
Wow that’s a large boat to capsize in such light wind. Wonder if there was some type of sudden mechanical failure, loss of steering, hull breach, rogue wave, etc… Glad everyone is safe
Was that a sailing cat or power cat? Either way, it’s hard to imagine in capsizing in any half decent weather. I’m speculating they had a hull breach on one side. I’m glad everybody is OK. And I always monitor 16 when on the water.
The cat was a 25ft center console. I was on board. the Captain was Bryson Cook. All five of us on board were picked up by sportfisher out of georgetown (I cant remember the name of the boat). Bryson did everything right in a bad situation… he had the crew put on life vests and he made sure to grab the ditch bag with a the hand-held vhf and plb. the boat went down very quickly… we all tied our vests together and began hailing the coast guard on the vhf. once they got our coordinates from the plb, they broadcast them on the radio and nearby boats headed our way. we spent less than an hour in the water before the sportfisher picked us up. the coast guard met us and took us back in to charleston. thank you to everyone who responded and helped in our rescue. everyone made it back home safely with no injuries.
John and Bryson,
I’m glad you guys are home safe. That experience must have been terrifying for you. That’s the worst case scenario and it happened. Not long ago on this forum a few guys were complaining about Coast Guard members boarding their vessels and inspecting them. I hope they’re reading this thread now. Thank god those guys are out there. Bryson and John are both extremely intelligent guys and they’re seasoned veterans offshore. I’m sure whatever went wrong was not something that could be fixed. I’m glad you guys are home safe. If that were me id probably never be able to fish offshore again.
Capt. R. Killin
“Day Tripper”
Shamrock 20 cuddy
Ford 351W
That was my boat. We rode out without any problems at 20-25 kts. Both bilge pumps were working, both bilges stayed dry for the ride. Hindsight being 20/20, I’ve highlighted my mistakes in red</font id=“red”> so that hopefully they can help someone else. Probably the most important thing that anyone can take away from this situation (no matter how safe you think your boat is) is to have your ditch bag within arm’s reach and easily deployable. Mine sat directly on top of the console and one small velcro strap from the handle to the T-top stopped it from sliding around too much.
While I don’t know exactly what caused the boat to sink, my guess is this:
Once we slowed down to trolling speed, the waves were spaced out to where we would take a wave over the bow every once in a while, but nothing that seemed too terrible. I’m guessing that the waves coming over the bow filled all of the bow lockers, and the drains were blocked by leaves and/or the stuff inside the lockers. At one point, I started to notice that we seemed to be taking more waves over the bow than we were before, but decided that it wasn’t very important since the bilges hadn’t cut on yet</font id=“red”>.
I think that once the water in the lockers weighed the bow down, any water in the bilge drained to the bow, away from the pumps. It seemed like it happened so fast at this point – once the bow got heavy, it plowed more, causing more water to collect in the bilge, making it heavier, in turn causing it to take more water over the bow. Before we knew it, there was standing water on the deck. We cut all of the lines that were out and I got one, maybe two Mayday calls out from the boat’s VHF. I did not use the DSC function, but I had my PLB. In the hustle of getting life jackets and making sure everyone was away from any lines, I did not think to use it. I should have used it in case the PLB failed</font id=“red”>.
Once we were in the water, the boat was completely gone a
So glad you guys made it back safely Bryson. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know. You know you’ve always got a spot on my boat when you’re ready to get back out there.
-Chris
Great to hear everyone was okay in such a crazy situation. Also, from everything you said as well as the passenger above you sounds like you deserve a WELL DONE here Bryson. Good job reacting fast keeping everyone safe. Boat and tackle can be replaced, lives cannot.
Glad to hear you all are safe. Cool heads made a bad situation from getting worse. One question; Did the CG deploy their helicopter or has it already been moved down to Savanna(?)
CG chopper was deployed, saw it pass overhead while out there yesterday. Also, he says in his post “The CG chopper arrived a little while later, and the CG vessel made it out to pick us up and take us home.” Always thankful we have them here.
