Man Overboard

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The 45' FV Anna Mary left Montauk, on eastern Long Island, New York late in the day on July 23 and headed offshore. At 3am John Aldridge was working on deck getting things ready to haul lobster trap trawls at dawn. His fishing partner Anthony Sosinski was below deck sleeping.

Aldridge was attempting to move a 200 lb. cooler to access a deck hatch. He used a long hook to grab the handle at the base of the cooler. Pulling and leaning back with his weight into it the handle broke off. Aldridge fell backward. He began sliding on the pitched and slick deck. In a flash he was over the edge of the open transom and in the black water. The boat steamed away on autopilot.

The odds were steeply stacked against him, but his actions over the next 12 hours improved those odds. Sosinski woke at 6am and couldn’t find Aldridge anywhere on the boat. He called the Coast Guard at 6:22 am. The call initiated a rescue event that engaged a number of resources the Coast Guard deploys immediately. A helicopter, a jet, and a high speed rescue vessel were all sent out.

USCG Lt. Jeff Janaro, Long Island Station New Haven, said that what the Coast Guard was looking for at tat point, a man’s head floating in the water, was equivalent to trying to find something the size of a coconut in an area the size of the state of Rhode Island. More often than not, said Lt. Janaro, when someone goes overboard like this they are not found alive.

Aldridge used his fishermen’s knowledge to help him survive. He pulled off his boots and used them for floatation. He found a large orange trawl buoy for floatation and visibility. Aldridge’s home port of Montauk rallied with a 21 boat search effort.

Twelve hours after falling overboard in the middle of the night, reaching near exhaustion 43 miles offshore, being circled by sharks, Aldridge saw the Coast Guard jet. He swam toward it’s search pattern. Soon after the helicopter was hovering and brought him back.

Lt. Janaro noted that the use of a Personal Floatation Device (PFD) and a pocket PLB would likely have resulted in Aldridge being found 9 hours sooner. Read the full story at the link below.

Go to the E-edition Extras section of the Fishermen’s Voice website to watch the Coast Guard Rescue video and link to the New York Times Magazine story: http://www.fishermensvoice.com/201403ManOverboardVideoLink.html