Rogue wave broadsides Gloucester dragger

Peter K. Prybot

April 27, 2007 11:05 pm

— Kirk Wonson and the crew of the Gloucester-based dragger Grace Marie nearly found out the hard way how life can often imitate art.
“I had just watched the (Discovery Channel’s) ‘Deadliest Catch’ series that showed a rogue wave hit a crab boat at night and nearly roll it over. Twenty minutes later, (a rogue wave) slammed us broadsides,” said Wonson, who was on watch in the Grace Marie’s pilothouse at midnight April 5 while owner and operator Sebastian “Busty” Noto and crewmen Dan Sullivan and Matteo Ferrara slept below in the fo’c’sle.
The olive-green-and-white stern trawler was towing its fishing gear at about three knots on the bottom 80 miles off of Cape Cod side-to a southwest wind, howling up to 40 knots with 12-foot waves that night.
Big wall of water
The wave’s impact and loud bang immediately woke Noto and sent him running to the pilothouse. “From the noise, I knew it was a wave,” he said.
Wonson barely had time to get off of the pedestaled chair that he had been sitting on near the steering wheel and controls before Noto arrived.
“What happened?” Noto asked him.
“It was an odd wave — a big wall of water. That was a good one. The boat took it great,” replied a still shocked Wonson.
Wonson didn’t see the wave coming in the darkness. Nighttime, especially when compounded by cloudiness that makes the sky and sea indistinguishable at times, makes riding out storms and working in rough weather difficult for most fishermen. A vessel’s deck and running lights will only illuminate the white caps of nearby waves. Crews often only feel an oncoming wave by their vessel’s sudden rolling or rising, and by then, the wave is already on top of them.
The Grace Marie’s crew figured the vessel had risen halfway up on this freak wave, probably well in excess of 25 feet, before its top half spilled and hit them. Wonson remembers seeing part of a wave “come over the bow.”
Towing the fishing gear from each corner of the stern helped steady the vessel and cancel some of the wave’s rolling impact. Fortunately, none of the crew had been working on deck when the wave hit. The Grace Marie kept on fishing after the incident.
Rogue wave definition
According to online literature, rogue waves, or freak waves, are spontaneous and more than twice the height of the average wave in the area at the time. They can damage even large ships and ocean liners and can come as walls of water, in groups of three or a single, giant wave collapsing after a few seconds.
Cape May encounter
The news of the Grace Marie’s rogue wave encounter sparked a flashback of my seeing Joe Cody’s 95-foot deep-sea lobster dragger, Cape May, limping to the Star Fisheries Wharf one bitter cold January morning in the late 1970s with its topsides iced up and mattresses stuffed in most of her pilothouse window frames. A severe arctic cold front with nearly hurricane-force winds had driven the steel eastern-rig side trawler from the lobster grounds on Corsair Canyon, approximately 250 miles southeast of Gloucester.
The homebound Cape May took a huge rogue wave right over the bow — one so big that the wave not only crashed over the high whalebacked bow and inundated the deck, but it also smashed out most of the pilothouse’s windows, partially flooded the pilothouse and short-circuited all of the electronics. Flying shards of glass even cut Captain Don Sutherland’s face as he slept in his quarters there. Pilothouses are located near the stern in eastern-rig side trawlers. The Cape May navigated back to Gloucester by compass that trip.
Crew notices damage
The Grace Marie’s crew noticed the wave damage when they hauled back their fishing gear after towing it for five hours.
“Look at that,” Wonson told the crew as he pointed to the port-side weather break, which the wave had bent and partially ripped. The weather break is a vertical and horizontal gunwale extension that runs on both sides from the fo’c’stle aft to about midway down the side. The structure is usually made of steel plating reinforced by framing. The weather break helps shield deck crews from the elements.
“When did that happen?” asked Sullivan as he appeared on deck from a deep sleep. He had slept through the whole wave incident.
“Usually I’m a light sleeper,” Sullivan added.
Solid boat
“She’s a solid boat. She’s also a good sea boat,” said Noto, 42, of the Grace Marie. “I’ll stop fishing when the wind blows over 45 mph and the waves reach 15-foot heights.”
Noto, like other experienced fishermen, gets a gut feeling when sea conditions are too rough to work.
Former owner and skipper Gaetano “Tommy” G. Brancaleone had Rhode Island Marine Services, Inc., build the 75.5-by-21-by-11.2-foot steel, raised fo’c’stle stern trawler — the former Paul & Domenic — in 1978. The Paul & Domenic made many weather-challenging winter fishing trips out to Georges Bank in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
‘It was a wave’
“You need to come down to the boat and see what happened,” Noto told his wife, Stephanie, after the vessel docked in April.
After viewing the damage, she said, “I figured they must have hit the wharf.”
Her husband quickly corrected her, “No, it was a wave.”
His wife was not amused. “What were you doing out there? You’re nuts!” Stephanie Noto added, “I tell him all the time, you don’t fool around with Mother Nature. Busty is always checking the weather.”
But weather predictions are never sure things, and many vessels fishing eight to 20 hours from Gloucester will opt to remain on the grounds in iffy weather and not waste precious days at sea by going in early without a good trip of fish aboard. Some breezes, especially out of the southwest, often last only a few hours before dying out.
The Grace Marie has continued fishing with the damage. Noto plans to get the torn and bent metal plating and framework repaired in the near future. He figures the job will cost him several thousand dollars.
“There is no sense in getting nervous about the whole wave incident. It’s just part of the job,” Noto said.
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This columnist and his fellow mooring holders at Pigeon Cove Harbor give a special thanks to Rockport co-harbormasters Scott Story and Rosemary Lesch for quickly replacing the badly storm-damaged and dangerous skiff floats with new ones.
This was a big job, between removing the old floats, having to re-tie all the skiffs and having to deal with all of the lines, that they primarily did themselves.
“We try,” said Story.
They also do in the eyes of the Pigeon Cove Harbor mooring holders.

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