Man Found off Jacksonville Beach After Being Lost at Sea for Three Days

MAYPORT, Fla. -- A 73-year-old Connecticut man is safe on dry land after being lost at sea for three days.
According to Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Christopher Evanson, Richard Steg of Storrs, Conn., was trying to sail from the Ponce De Leon Inlet near St. Augustine back to Connecticut.
Three people knew that Steg was making the trip, but didn't report him missing because they thought it would take him three weeks to make the trip, according to Steg.
Steg bought the "Bon Vivant" in Melbourne, Fla. a few weeks ago. He flew down last week so he could sail it back up to Connecticut.
Steg embarked on his journey Sunday in his 35-foot vessel "Bon Vivant." Steg said the National Weather Service had issued a small craft advisory but he went out anyway.
During a storm Monday morning, the boat's sail mast was snapped and the engine died. Steg said he made a half-dozen mayday calls but didn't think they were heard.
One of those calls was picked up by the operator of the tug boat "Calusa Coast" Tuesday night, who told Coast Guard Watchstanders about the call.
The Coast Guard sent up a rescue helicopter crew, who searched that night. The next morning, a C-130 crew flew over the same area, and just after 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the Coast Guard found Steg about 47 miles east of Jacksonville Beach.
Steg said when he woke up this morning, he saw a Coast Guard ship heading straight for him, and couldn't believe it, even crying.
Despite his time at sea, Evanson said that the man had minimal, if any, injuries.
The Coast Guard is calling the rescue a "miraculous case".

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/mostpopular/news-article.aspx?storyid=173556

More sailing terms...

So I am still learning all those sailing terms and thought I'd post a few more...  Unfortunately, these are not as fun as the others~lol

AFT ~ the back of the boat

BEAR AWAY ~ turning away from the wind

Not exactly the correct photo...but you have to admit it's cute:-)

BILGE ~ the lowest part of the boat (this is where all "stray" water collects)

BLOCK ~ a pulley with 1 or more wheels or sheaves

BOOM ~ the spar or beam that stabilizes the main sail

BOOM VANG ~ control line (rope), usually with multi-purpose tackle that keeps the boom from lifting in the wind

BOW ~ front of the boat

OK men...concentrate here...focus on the boat!

BOW LINE ~ line (rope) attached to the front of the boat

CAPSIZE ~ ok, I refuse to touch this one since I have no need to "learn" this term...seriously...

OK, so after the last photo, I am completely depressed.  That is a NICE bat!  I'll post more terms tomorrow without the "capsize" photo~lol

~Pamela

I'm SO bad...

Our neighbor, Patrick, his brother and his brother's girlfriend (maybe wife?) decided to go out for a "two hour" tour this afternoon.  When he told Dock Master Paul what he was doing, Paul said a "three hour tour?" (you know, from Gilligan's Island).

Well, Patrick hadn't been gone very long when he called Paul to tell him he had run hard aground.  Unfortunately, he had left the dock when the tide was going out and made a small miscalculation in depth.  I guess that happens from time to time.  Now, if this was a sandy bottom area, it would be no problem to hop overboard and push off, but there are several feet of mud on the bottom, so there's nothing to do but wait for high tide.

Well, to make matter's a little worse, Patrick is supposed to be leaving with the "pump out boy's" (the one's who sit on the "boy's dock...Paul, Steve and who knows who else) to go the Fantasy Fest in Key West tonight.  High tide isn't until just before mid-night...  I'll say no more;-)

Not being able to get the Gilligan's Island song out of my mind...and having a few glasses of wine (that's a key factor to my strange sense of humor), I had to "fix" the words to suit myself...then I printed out several copies to share with the other marina neighbors...and posted them on the main bulletin board.

Anyway...here's what I came up with:

The Tale of Patrick's Shake Down Cruise

(set to the tune of Gilligan's Isle)

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip

That started from this river port

Aboard a tiny ship.

The mate was a skinny sailing man,

His brother strong and sure.

Three passengers set sail that day

For a short quick tour...a short, quick tour.

The tide, it started getting low

The tiny ship was beached

If not for the courage of the fearless crew

The minnow would be breached.

The ship set ground on the shore of this muddy strip of land

With Patrick...and his brother too

His girlfriend...or his wife?

The beer was gone

No food was packed

No ice was on board

stuck on muddy ground.

So this is the tale of the grounded crew

They're there for a long, long time

They'll have to make the best of things

It's a long time til high tide...long time til high tide.

The captain and his brother too

Will do there very best

To make the girlfriend comfortable

In the heat and the muddy mess.

No phone, no light, no dinghy ride

Not a single luxury

Like most boaters tales; this tale

Will be part of history.

So hurry up and get adrift

You're sure to get a smile

From your buddies here at Rivers Edge

Waiting for the “festival tour”

Interesting sailing quotes...

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed in the things that you didn’t do than the ones you did do, so throw off the bow lines.
Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover!”
- Mark Twain


“In rough seas, sometimes it’s too dangerous to boil water. But as I’m a girl, my nutritionist acknowledges that I have to eat chocolate each day!”
- Samantha Davies

"Trying to have wisdom without application is like trying to catch the winds without raising the sails!" A sea quote by Thomas Russell


"Great people are not affected by each puff of wind that blows ill. Like great ships, they sail serenely on, in calm sea or tempest!"

"To me, nothing made by man is more beautiful than a sailboat under way in fine weather, and to be on that sailboat is to be as close to heaven as I expect to get. It is unalloyed happiness."


“The beauty of those immense rolling waves is endless and there is a kind of eternal feeling about their majestic rolling that will live forever!” - A sea quote by Ellen MacArthur

"The winds of grace are blowing, but it is you that must raise your sails"

"The fisherman know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient for remaining ashore." - Vincent Van Gogh

A great sailing blog...

So I've discovered another great sailng blog that I simply LOVE.  It's called Sailing, Simplicity and the Pursuit of Happiness.  This blog follows the life of Teresa, who gave up her career teaching to move abourd her 27" sailboat and travel.  Well worth the time to stop by and check it out!

Nothing comes easily...

So today Bob and I decided to reposition the tarp we have spread over the boom to keep the rain and sun out of the cabin and cockpit.  Sounds easy, huh?  NOT!

I decided that we needed some type of "spreader bar" at the mast-end f the tarp so we would have more standing room inside the cockpit.  Being 5'10" and 6' Bob and I really wanted a little more headroom when we are getting in and out of the boat (not to mention simply trying to enjoy the evening breeze from the cockpit). 

My friend Larry (Lucky Larry around the marina) was nice enough to give use several long pieces of PVC pipe that he had used for the same purpose before.  We set about what we "thought" would be a 30 minute job...1 1/2 hours ago~lol  We were able to get one of the PVC pipes lashed to the mast and the tarp connected (albeit not well) and the tarp tied down higher then the ties at the aft end (gotta have somewhere for the rain to run off...better than in the forward hatch!).  That was a chore!  Not only did the pipe "roll" every time I tried to hook the tarp to it, but we also had to deal with the tarp, the rather brisk wind that blowing AND lashing it to the mast all at the same time.  Someone could have sold tickets for the show and made a small fortune~roflol  Bob and I looked like a strange version of the Three Stooges trying to hold everything and still work at the same time;-)

Now that the front end is finished, we moved onto the middle section and simply tied the tarp off to whatever was available down the sides of The Mystery.  Easy enough, thank goodness.

The aft section...not so easy.  Not only did we have to work with no room to put your feet (thanks to the tiny bimini we have that covers maybe 1 square inch with shade and is otherwise useless), but now the wind was really starting to kick.  The second PVC pipe never made it into place...at least by my hands~lol  I helped lash the tarp down over the framework for our crappy bimini and called it quits.  My hands hurt (damn that wind and those tiny lines), my arms ache from straining to hold that tarp against the wind AND tie if off to both the PVC and the mast and my sense of accomplishment was shot down the tubes by the difficulty of getting what should have been an easy job done.

Bob, on the other hand, is still struggling trying to figure out how to get the aft section of the tarp spread out a little more with the other piece of PVC.  Me, I can stand in my little corner of the cockpit and my desire for more has fled with the wind.  Maybe on a much less windy day I'll be willing to tackle the problem again, but for now I'm just fine...thank you very much:-)

Edited to add:  Bob did manage to get the aft PVC pipe in place and we are enjoying the shade so far.  Unfortunately, one of the metal "rigs" on the aft section of the tarp has already broken off.  Guess we should have bought a good tarp instead of using this crappy old one...live and learn is all I can say.  Guess we'll be doing this again within the next couple of months.  Maybe by then we'll have figured out an easier way of getting this "simple" job done.

Tragedy for boaters...

I heard the Coast Guard report on the VHF while in the marina office as they pulled the drowning victim from the water.  This was extremely sad to hear.

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-10-25/story/mayport-shrimpboat-capsizes-one-dead

Mayport shrimp boat capsizes; 1 dead

By Paul Pinkham

A Mayport shrimper was able to rescue the captain of a shrimp boat that took on water and capsized Monday off Amelia Island but was too late to save a crewman.

“When we got there to them, we just pulled them out of the water. That’s all I could do,” said lifelong shrimper Tony Malone. “It feels good, but it feels kind of sad because you couldn’t save the other person, too.”

Malone, first mate on the shrimping vessel Joe Bip, said his boat got a distress call about 3 p.m. from the 36-foot Miss Alberta, which was shrimping nearby, about a half mile from shore.

They rushed to help, and Malone dove into the water to save the two-member crew.

“The boat was already upside down,” he said.

He said he found the captain, who he and witnesses identified as Bo King of Mayport, swimming with his dead crew member tethered to him with a rope.

“A captain will do anything to try to keep his crew together, whether dead or alive,” Malone explained.

Neither the Coast Guard or Florida Fish and Wildlife officers would name the deceased shrimper, pending notification of his next of kin. No cause of death was announced.

Officers wouldn’t say what caused the boat to capsize.

Fish and Wildlife officers said the Joe Bip was one of two vessels that assisted in the rescue.

Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office detectives and the Duval County Medical Examiner’s Office also were on the scene at the Safe Harbor dock in Mayport, where the body was brought Monday night.

King, clearly shaken by the tragedy, declined to speak with reporters.
Other shrimpers and their families and friends gathered at the dock.

“Anything can happen on a shrimp boat,” said lifelong shrimper John Diaz, 39, of Mayport.

He said his boat was about seven miles away and was unable to get to the Miss Alberta in time.

 “When something happens to one person, it happens to all of us,” Diaz said. “We’re just like family out here.”

paul.pinkham@jacksonville.com
(904) 359-4107