East Coast

The U.S. Coast Guard continues to search for the four fishermen who are missing after the F/V EMMY ROSE sank on Monday morning. The vessel was located approximately 20 miles off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts at the time of the incident.

Watchstanders at the First District Coast Guard Command Center in Boston received an alert from the vessel’s EPIRB after it made contact with the water. It was reported that no distress or mayday calls were made by the crew and that calls to cell phones and a satellite phone located aboard the vessel went unanswered.

The U.S. Coast Guard immediately launched a Cape Cod MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew as well as the Coast Guard Cutter VIGOROUS to search for the F/V EMMY ROSE. When responders arrived at the vessel’s last known position, they discovered debris as well as an empty, yet inflated and deployed life raft.

Five passengers were killed, and a 10-year-old girl was permanently brain-damaged, in the sinking of the Lady D Water Taxi on March 6, 2004. The accident took place in Baltimore Harbor, on its run between Fort McHenry and Fells Point. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the pontoon boat was carrying too much weight when it capsized during a storm, while carrying 25 passengers and crew.

The Coast Guard is being faulted for using outdated weighting guidelines to certify the water taxi for 25 passengers. The Coast Guard guidelines use 140 lbs as an average passenger weight, which is a figure they came up with back in 1942. This figure would allow the taxi to carry 3,500 pounds. The average passenger weight on the fated run was determined to be 168 pounds, for a total of 4,210 pounds. With pounding wind and waves, this proved to be too much for the Lady D.
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Articles Posted in East Coast

Four Fishermen Missing after F/V Emmy Rose Sinking

Sinking of Water Taxi Determined to be Due to Overweighting