It seems they learned the hard way that, while the mouth of the Mississipi River is the most productive fishery in North America, it's also arguably the most dangerous. Enter Captain Rob Buck, owner of Sea Tow Westbank, the gent who got a late-night call for H-E-L-L-L-P!!! Actually, his Nov. 16 call didn't come from the stranded fishermen--it came from the U.S. Coast Guard, who asked him to salvage a boat that had taken on water nine miles out of Southwest Pass at a platform in West Delta block 86.
"They feared the vessel would bang up against the rig, and we'd have another issue with leaking oil," said Capt. Buck.
This veteran skipper met the anglers at Venice, Louisiana's Cypress Cove Marina the next morning at 6 a.m., whereupon he learned they had come down to fish Venice and decided to tiptoe offshore.
"Subsequently, the seas built up, and the motor shut down," Buck recounted. "They took on water and ended up in the Gulf. They were able to loop a ski rope over a piece of the platform to hold the boat, and they then somehow were able to crawl onto the platform. A helicopter saw them and directed the Coast Guard to their location."
Incidentally, the platform, described by Buck as "WD86B," sits in 190 feet of water.
After rescuing the men, the Coast Guard flew them to Belle Chasse, and they finally made their way back to Cypress Cove at 3 a.m. Nov. 17, just three hours before Buck arrived to salvage their boat. He described them as "shaken, cold and tired but grateful to be alive." They wanted to tag along with Buck to retrieve the boat, but he wouldn't let them for insurance reasons.
An hour later, Buck and Capt. Evan Davis arrived at the platform in Buck's 29-foot catamaran with dual Tohatsu 250-hp outboards. They found the nearly submerged Triton still tethered to the platform and began the arduous process of dewatering the boat.
The complicated two-person technique involves towing the bow of the submerged vessel into an oncoming sea to kick it up and force water to the back of the boat. While one captain steers the tow vessel, the other jumps into the sunken craft with batteries and pumps to slowly rid it of water. Sea Tow captains practice this technique during training sessions in Montauk, NY, where seas often run 7 to 8 feet.
Still, that day in the Gulf, seas were too rough for Buck to feel confident spending any more time than necessary in the Triton. He and Davis waited until they were in Southwest Pass to complete the dewatering process. Then then returned the boat to Cypress Cove Marina, where the Okie anglers loaded it onto a trailer and headed home.
Buck said the boat certainly would have to be totaled, because it was fully submerged in salty Gulf water. As for the anglers, "They learned an important but expensive lesson, which could have been a lot worse. When you're in a single-engine boat, it's not a good idea to be offshore," he explained. "They're fortunate to be alive."
I saw this story in Jay Kumar's 11/29/2016 issue of BassBlaster. He picked it up from the original author, Todd Masson, who writes for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.
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