Drifting Nantucket Ghost Boat

[LORENSWIFE]

I wonder who the boat manufacturer is. 3 Years getting kicked around in the ocean and still afloat? What a testament.

"It looks entirely different," Douglas said upon seeing the photos. "That's amazing."
Douglas remembers the water was restless on the day he set out to sea, and the fish weren't biting. He tried to keep the boat stationary, bracing himself as huge rollers crashed into it.
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"At all times, it's a very sketchy area," Douglas told msnbc.com. "You wouldn't want to be dumped in the ocean there."
But that's exactly what happened when a rogue wave knocked Douglas and his brother-in-law, Rich St. Pierre, off the boat and into a sink-or-swim fight for survival.
Douglas remembers thinking the water was not too cold. "The only way I was going to survive was just to get started, not tread water," he said.
But swimming didn't come as easy to St. Pierre, 68, who had gone through open heart surgery a year earlier. However, a survival kit containing an inflatable device had been knocked off the boat and floated to St. Pierre's side. It was a miracle, Douglas said, noting that the kit was the only item from the boat in the water with them.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard
Scott Douglas, 58, watched his yellow fishing boat disappear in 2008, carried away by the swelling surf. He thought it would be the last time he'd ever see the Queen Bee.


Douglas swam for about an hour and made it to shore on Smith's Point, a beach off the coast of Nantucket. Dripping wet and exhausted, he walked up to a cabin and asked to use the phone to alert the Coast Guard. Not long after, he saw St. Pierre walking on dry land.
"At the end of the day, it just wasn't our time," Douglas said.
While that marked the end of their ordeal, the Queen Bee's journey didn't end there.
Lt. Joe Klinker, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman, said the most likely scenario is that the boat somehow got across the continental shelf and into the Gulf Stream.
"From there it may drift north off the coast of northern Canada and then east with the North Atlantic currents," Klinker told msnbc.com.
He said it's rare, but not unheard of for an object off the coastline of the United States to drift across the Atlantic to Europe. But a boat? "I've never heard of anything like this," Klinker said.

The ability to withstand the hardships of the Atlantic has a lot to do with the make of the boat, Klinker said. The Queen Bee is a 26-foot center console fishing boat made by Regulator.
"It probably could have floated for another three years," Klinker said.
The Spanish Coast Guard alerted their U.S. counterpart Tuesday. Based on salvage law, the boat now belongs to Spain.
Douglas, who is now retired and lives in New Jersey, said he doesn't want the boat back. But with four grandchildren, he has thought about turning Queen Bee's story into a children's book.
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"It's interesting to see what life takes and gives," he said.

[428FE]

I wonder who the boat manufacturer is. 3 Years getting kicked around in the ocean and still afloat? What a testament.

[A/Fuel]

I hear there is another abandon boat off the coast of Italy.

[DanStokes]

Given that Wilmington is a seaport we have an attorney's office and on the front window in gold letters it says:
Attorneys at Law
Proctors at (or is it "in"?) Admiralty

I was here for several years until a lawyer friend of ours explained what it was (she doesn't work there). Turned out I had guessed about right.

Dan

[SuperBuickGuy]

correction - the people who found the boat (Spanish marine somethingoranother) own the boat... really, it is finders keepers. If you ever are really bored, read some of the cases (Admiralty) about when a boat or sea-going structure is abandonned... some of the litigants were... how do we say this... aggressive in making the ships abandonned (in at least one case they sounded an alarm which the crew took to mean abandon ship - the salvagers claimed the ship (they were the ones who triggered the alarm).

[Barry Donovan]

the lost spaniard finally acknowledged gods current and found home.

the conquistador stories.. i despise them.

columbus.

the ships coming from the west are many years old. ireland has one. the people were different enough to inspire poetry. ghostly and large.

seeking my own genealogy, that was one story I still got hung up on.

it is those wthout a gov'ts bragging rights that found everything.

[Scott Liggett]

The Flying Dutchman is the most famous ghost ship story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Dutchman

[LORENSWIFE]

Spooky! I remember seeing a Documentary on the Mary Celeste once...After looking at the Wiki article I surmise they aboandoned ship believing they were sinking...

[Scott Liggett]

It's not the first ship to make it across the Atlantic without it's crew. Read about this ship, the Mary Celeste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste

[Dan Barlow]

Did the captain ever declare abandon ship? Or does. Three years just kinda knock it over the statute of limitations? :-)

[studemax]

Not much to claim. Dirty fiberglass, and two rusty engines.

[LORENSWIFE]

The article I read yesterday said spain found the boat "intact", I'm not sure what intact means in Spanish, but it does not really look intact to me. Also it was mentioned that Spain had claimed the boat due to international salvage rules...

[DanStokes]

It seems to need a little work. But if the guys who found it are Hot Rodders they probably already have plans - "We could section it. And my brother has an extra 500HP Merc he isn't using and.........".

Dan

[Orange65]

I read an article about this boat yesterday but did not see the pictures. Very interesting. You just never know what is floating around out there. I read that there is an "island" of floating debris from the Japanese tsunami that is headed toward Canada and the northwestern part of the US. It includes some radioactive debris as well. I forgot when they said it would make land fall.

[LORENSWIFE]

Did anyone see this yesterday?






Drifting Nantucket ghost boat comes ashore in Spain after three-year, 3,500-mile journey





US Coast Guard photo




For more than three years she wandered the sea, devoid of a captain or crew. But last week, she was found off the coast of Spain, about 3,500 nautical miles from her home in Nantucket.

(US Coast Guard photo)

The Queen Bee, a 26-foot pleasure boat, was left to drift after stormy conditions threw her passengers overboard off the coast of Nantucket on Aug. 25, 2008. The ghost boat was found 20 miles off the northern coast of Spain on Jan. 17, the US Coast Guard said today.

I didn’t think we’d ever see the boat again,” owner Scott Douglas said today. “I thought that was just the unfinished part of our story.”
In 2008, Douglas and his brother-in-law, Rich St. Pierre, were thrown overboard when they attempted to cross a sandbar. Douglas said the men were fishing in an area commonly known as the “Bonito Bar” when a wave hit the boat, throwing them into the briny deep. The men swam to Esther Island, just off Nantucket, where they were rescued by the Coast Guard.

“There were times when both of us didn’t think we were going to make it,” Douglas said in a statement. “Everything had to go our way. It was a miracle.”
The Queen Bee -- a latter-day Flying Dutchman -- probably drifted north in the Gulf Stream until it hit the North Atlantic Current, which likely carried the vessel to Spain.
According to maritime law, the Spanish Maritime Rescue Coordination Center, the organization that found the derelict vessel, now owns the boat, a Coast Guard spokesman said today. Douglas said he has no plans to try to reunite with the boat.
“Any personal items left on it I’m sure are long gone,” he said. “Though it would be a really neat excuse to visit Spain.”
Colin A. Young can be reached at [email protected].