Published: 01/31/2008
'Unstable' boat likely capsized; Coast Guard issues final report on Lady Luck sinking
The Lady Luck at Newburyport's waterfront. Handout/Courtesy Photo
Staff Writer
NEWBURYPORT - A yearlong probe into the sinking of the Newburyport-based Lady Luck and deaths of its two crewmen reveals that it sank so rapidly after capsizing that the men aboard had no time to access lifesaving equipment, a U.S. Coast Guard report released yesterday said.
The report said the boat likely capsized as a result of water on its deck and possibly the position of its reels, which made the Lady Luck, already a relatively unstable vessel, so unstable it capsized. The 52-foot steel-hulled dragger sank about 30 miles southeast of Portland, Maine, in water more than 500 feet deep.
Since there were neither survivors nor eyewitnesses, exactly what happened to the Lady Luck and its crew - Capt. Sean Cone, 24, a North Andover native, and Dan Miller, 21, of North Hampton, N.H - will never be completely known, said Capt. Jim Rendon of Sector Northern New England.
"We won't really ever know what happened, but it could have been a combination of things that led to the capsize," Rendon said during a press conference yesterday afternoon. "This investigation is just a stark reminder of how dangerous commercial fishing is and the environment which it operates in. We want to learn the best we can from this and share with other fishermen what we learn."
Coast Guard officials yesterday released a 23-page report outlining the investigation and held a press conference at the Sector Northern New England headquarters in South Portland, Maine.
The sinking occurred in the early morning hours of Feb. 1 last year, about three and a half hours after the boat had left Portland to return to Newburyport. The Lady Luck had docked in Portland while fishing for shrimp and had loaded 6 tons of ice into its holds just hours before departing.
Coast Guard investigators used a remote-controlled video camera to photograph the wreck. The video found no sign of "catastrophic" damage, showed the boat's fishing nets stowed away and found the life raft at the bottom of the ocean, deployed but still attached to the vessel.
The most likely cause is capsizing from water on deck that made the boat unstable, Rendon said. The Coast Guard investigated two other possibilities, including a collision with another boat and flooding of the boat's engine room.
Both of those, however, were considered very unlikely after the investigation.
Coast Guard officials questioned boats in the area at the time and found the closest one was 12 nautical miles from the Lady Luck at the time it sank. Flooding is dismissed, the report says, because the boat would have capsized much more slowly and given time for crewmen to access lifesaving equipment and send out a call for help.
