Salvaged: Raised Boat Stirs Memories Of Tragic Night

Salvaged 
Raised Boat Stirs Memories Of Tragic Night
By Jack Stewardson
The Standard-Times
August 4, 1999

The slight swells of Buzzards Bay yesterday lapped at the starboard bow quarter of the ocean quahogger Cape Fear, washing off sand that accumulated during her seven-month's stay in a watery grave.

A 25-foot long, 3-foot-high section of the 12-foot quahogger's bow quarter lay exposed with a blue hull, black side and the name Cape Fear distinctly painted in white on the bow - as it was towed slowly up Buzzards Bay to a safe anchorage.

The Cape Fear was plucked from 78 feet of water off Buzzards Bay Light on Monday night. The massive 190-foot crane barge Chesapeake 1000, which held it near the water's surface with 3 1/2- inch thick wire cables slung underneath from the barge's 250-foot derrick.

The barge was anchored yesterday afternoon in Buzzards Bay in what is known as "anchorage M," off Nasketucket Bay, about 2 miles off West Island in Fairhaven, where Coast Guard officials said a New Jersey salvage team from DonJon Marine was expected to lift the Cape Fear onto a 134-foot barge.

"Right now the folks at the anchorage are concentrating on any pollution threat and mitigating any pollution that might occur," said Lt. Dawn Kallen of the Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Providence yesterday afternoon.

She said a slight sheen of oil had leaked from the vessel.

An oil spill response vessel, the NRC Guardian, will be at the scene throughout the salvage operation.

Coast Guard officials could not say whether the Cape Fear would be lifted aboard the barge, the Witte, last night or today. The boat will be taken to Fairhaven Shipyard and Marina Inc. in Fairhaven.

"We will have a joint survey done on the Cape Fear," said Lt. Lisa Campbell, public affairs officer with the Coast Guard Marine Safety Office, who took a press contingent out to the barge yesterday morning aboard a 41-foot Coast Guard patrol boat.

She said it is hard to say whether the inspection of the boat will yield any more clues as to why it took on water and capsized Jan. 8 while returning to New Bedford in a snow squall after a quahogging trip.

Three Cape Fear crew members, skipper Steven Novack, mate James Haley Jr. and deckhand Joseph Lemieux, were rescued by the fishing boat Misty Dawn shortly after the sinking, but two other men were lost. The body of Paul Martin washed up on a Dartmouth beach the following day; the body of Steven Reeves has not been recovered.

Cape Fear owner Warren Alexander, who hired DonJon Marine to raise the boat, has not said publicly what his plans are and did not return telephone messages left at his Atlantic Shellfish Co. offices in New Bedford.

Several sources involved with the waterfront, however, say they expect the boat will be repaired and returned to service.

"He's going to make some improvements on it and put it back fishing," said Roger Judge, president of Fairhaven Shipyard and Marina Inc.

Mr. Judge said it is expected that the boat's long stay in the water has caused considerable damage.

"Except for the actual steel hull, all the wiring, electronics and mechanical machinery - most of that will be gone," he said. "The interior and the crew quarters will have to be just about gutted and start from scratch. The engines might be an iffy thing. They might try and save the engines."

The clear skies, smooth seas and warm temperatures yesterday were in stark contrast to the cold, squally conditions on the evening the Cape Fear went down about 3.5 miles southwest of Cuttyhunk.

"It was a nasty, 6- to 8-foot seas and real cold," said Boatswain's Mate 2nd Class Joseph Uva, who was in charge of a 44-foot Coast Guard patrol craft dispatched from Menemsha that night to search for Cape Fear survivors.

"It's kind of an eerie feeling to see it up again," he said yesterday while piloting a 41-footer taking the press contingent out to the Chesapeake 1000. "Most of them you never see again."

"It was slushy out, real snotty weather," is how Seaman Michael Damiani, who also was involved in the search, described that night.

Their 44-footer searched into the wee hours of Jan. 9, but found just diesel oil on the surface, pieces of kitchenware and pieces of wood.

Planning for the salvage began in May, and last month some preliminary work took place when 458 gallons of lubricating oil was pumped from the vessel.

The salvage operation itself depended on weather conditions, and was delayed last week.

"It's just a matter of getting the right weather," said Steven Newes, vice president of DonJon Marine. "That's the biggest impact to lifting anything offshore."

Lt. Campbell said the initial salvage plan had called for the Cape Fear, which was lying on its port side, to be righted before being brought to the surface, but plans were revised last week due to difficulties in righting the boat.

"There weren't any problems," Mr. Newes said. "It was just a matter of a decision made on site by the salvage master," William Kratz.

"Basically it is getting smaller lifting slings under the wreck, and then rendering larger lifting slings, and then picking it up," said Mr. Newes.

At about 7:30 p.m. Monday, the Coast Guard approved a revised plan calling for the ship to be raised as it sat on the bottom. Just a little more than an hour after getting approval, the DonJon salvage team had the Cape Fear on the surface.

The 190-foot Chesapeake is a shear-leg derrick barge with a 250-foot boom. The leverage is provided from a series of 23 1/2-inch cable wires that move the arm, and the lifting wires slung under the boat.

The barge can lift 1,000 tons, according to Mr. Newes. The Cape Fear's gross registered tonnage is 188 gross tons, although water onboard and quahogs still in the hold would have made the vessel considerably heavier.

Mr. Newes said was a considerable number of quahogs aboard the Cape Fear, which was carrying 130 cages of quahogs - 90 below deck and 40 on deck - weighing about 3,400 pounds apiece when it went down.

DonJon, which provides salvage, heavy lifting, towing and barge service, was founded in 1964 and incorporated in 1966. It has been a Navy commercial salvage contractor since 1979.

Along the New England Coast, the company raised the tug Morton Bouchard after it sank in the Cape Cod Canal in 1983; was involved in freeing the bulk carrier Eldia off Nauset Beach in 1984; and more recently was involved in freeing the barge North Cape after it ran aground and spilled oil along the Rhode Island shoreline a few years ago.

The Cape Fear was one of four ocean quahog or surf clam boats to sink within a matter of weeks this winter, resulting in the loss of 11 fishermen in the Northeast and prompting the creation of a Coast Guard task force to look into vessel casualties.

The task force has recommended some sweeping proposals, including licenses for skippers and mandatory inspections of fishing boats, that will require action by Congress.

Meanwhile, Capt. George Matthews, executive officer of the Coast Guard Marine Safety Office, is still conducting a one-man board of inquiry into the sinking of the Cape Fear.

Hearings on the sinking are expected to reconvene a few weeks after investigators have surveyed the boat