Baja Mothership Tragedy!

I was watching the news the other day and saw the Baja mothership capsize segment and was surprised that it happened inside the Sea of Cortez.
A few hours later my sister called and told me one of our local fishing friends was on the boat. Luckily he was rescued after being in the water for 20 hours.....
I'm hoping they find the rest of the guys.

Best wishes to the families. There is still a lot of hope. It seems the water is warm and one of the survivors who swam in 2 miles out (took 8 1/2 hours in strong currents) left  several on his big cooler in strong currents. They likely still alive out there. He had a spare PFD in his cooler and since he got one off the boat, gave it to another—he saved a life.

I was thinking about this—one needs a Bug Out Bag for any boat trip. PFD, signaling devices. GPS, Radio, first aid, waterproof headlamp. Maybe wetsuit/dry suit, energy bars. etc.

Just got the call, one of my old buddies father-in-law was just pulled out of the water after 17 hours.  He is a diabetic and was in bad shape but they were able to revive and stabilize him.  I got this second-hand, but the guy said the boat went over at 2:30 at night and sunk in 2.5 minutes.  He was sleeping in his life vest and was able to scramble to the top of the boat and get out.  He thinks his buddy didn't get out and went down with the boat. Other second-hand details provided on boat condition and harbormaster warnings about rough seas/storm, but best to wait until more information becomes available, or at least I haven't read any official news on the situation yet.

Apparently, the boat was not equipped with an EPIRB; if it were, it would not have taken almost a day for Mexican authorities to realize something bad had happened.

i know this boat and its history, and it is not a good one safety wise, but the storm that came up down there was one of the worst freak storms in recent memory, i have a house down there in san felipe and my mother has retired to it this year, living down there full time. the day was very warm and calm and when she went to bed it was clear and a slight breeze, around 230 a violent storm hit, the winds were ferocious, ripping out trees and bushes in the garden, and the lighting was scary, but it passed through very quickly, it actually had her a little freaked out and we have been through a few hurricannes and she said this was worse, the ERIK had no chance, from what i am hearing from friends down there. and where it went down there is not much around if you got to shore, the new road is going south now towards gonzaga bay but it is still not opening much up yet, so hopefully there will be some survivors still found in the remote coast line, a good friend of the family from san felipe, his father in law was aboard as crew, he was at the house with my mom and her husband for a weekly sunday afternoon gathering when he got the call that the boat went down, he was found later that night, cameron

wow that sucks!!
hope most are found alive.

jim

I was thinking about this—one needs a Bug Out Bag for any boat trip.

Lots of lessons to be learned for sure.  Anxiously await safe returns, then hearing their stories.  People used to laugh when bro and I would bring goggles with us when fishing channel island charters, but I wouldn't want to swim two miles (or even one mile or 1/2 mile) without em

Have followed this story closely since its break.  Best wishes and fingers crossed for everyone.  There is still hope

Reports are trickling in.  These guys are some tough NorCal hombres, man, I tell ya.  Talk about quick thinking, adapt, improvise and overcome.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/08/MN7E1K8C5L.DTL&tsp=1

Fishing boat survivor: 'I knew we were going down'

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, July 8, 2011

(07-08) 17:54 PDT NOVATO -- At 73 years old, having already survived one shipwreck as a young merchant marine, Pius "Pete" Zuger reckons he knows his chances of beating death in a pinch.

He had one minute on Sunday to size up those chances as he stood on the heaving deck of the Erik fishing boat in the Gulf of California, with 15-foot waves lashing his back and men screaming in the wind all around him.

"I looked at the waves, I saw we were sinking fast, and I thought, 'Well, I'm a good swimmer, no problem,' and I jumped," Zuger recalled Friday, his first full day back at home in Novato after leaving Mexico. "I figured if I could get away from the boat in time, there would be plenty of floating debris around to hang onto."

He was right. Eight of his 26 fishing companions, mostly Bay Area residents, who were on the boat weren't so lucky.

One, Leslie Yee of Ceres (Stanislaus County), has been confirmed dead and seven others are still missing. The Erik, which sank in a furious, brief storm at 2:30 a.m., lies 200 feet below the waves 2 miles off the Mexican coast.
It would be a miracle

Searchers from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Mexican navy have been combing the region by air and by sea. But with hopes dwindling, Zuger and the other survivors started making their ways back home Thursday and Friday.

Zuger said he hopes the missing men will miraculously turn up after nearly a week in the water. But at this point it would be just that, he said - miraculous.

"It would be great if they are alive, but I doubt it," he said. "There are sharks and killer squid everywhere. I fear most of them are down there on the bottom of the sea with the boat."

One of the missing is his fishing pal Russell Bautista of the Sonoma County town of Penngrove. The last time Zuger saw him, they were both running from the cabin for the railing.

"We are fishing fools, and Russell convinced me to go down there on that trip," Zuger said sadly. "We're all good swimmers. It's hard to believe he hasn't been found."
Signs of trouble

Zuger said he had a bad feeling about the weather when he slunk to his bunk at 11 p.m. after a night of partying on the back deck. It was their first day at sea and the fishing was to begin in the morning, but 6-foot swells were already slapping the 115-foot boat. The wind was blowing at 30 knots.

"I figured the captain could handle it," he said. "And then at 2:30 a.m. Jim Miller (of Sonoma County) ran in and yelled, 'Let's get out now! We're sinking!' "

Zuger, dressed only in swimming trunks, dashed to the deck. To his horror, he found that the boat was not pointed into the by-now 50-knot winds, as nautical sense would dictate, but sideways.

"That was it, I knew we were going down," he said. He leaped in - and in one minute, the boat was beneath the waves.

Zuger latched onto a floating ice chest at first, then found a partially submerged skiff that had been tied to the bigger boat. Clinging to its bow was his best friend, Joe Beeler of Ripon (San Joaquin County).
To shore

They bailed out the boat with buckets and plastic bottles, and when the storm cleared they could see shoreline 2 miles away. The trouble was they had nothing to paddle with. So Zuger filled two bottles with water, attached them to a rope and threw them overboard.

"They were just heavy enough so that if I kept them in the right place, they steered us toward shore," he said. The tide went in, and by afternoon they hooked up with a life raft carrying eight men - and eight bigger ice chests.

"We ripped the chests apart and used them as paddles, and that's how we got to the beach," he said.

In all, his journey from disaster to safety was only slightly longer than the last time Zuger was shipwrecked. That was in the Mediterranean in 1961, when an oil tanker he was working on broke in half and he clung to the wreckage for four hours before being rescued.

That time, all he lost was the job. This time he lost $7,000 in fishing gear and some good friends.

"I love Mexico, and I will probably go down there again, but not fishing like that," he said. "That's the last time for me like that."

E-mail Kevin Fagan at [email protected].