Rescues off Cape Ann coast

By Patrick Anderson
Staff Writer

July 18, 2008 10:46 pm

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Nine beachgoers dragged out to sea by a high ebbing tide and head-high waves from a distant Tropical Storm Bertha were carried back to safety on Long Beach on Thursday afternoon by a group of surfers and a part-time lobsterman.

Rockport native Greg Twombly was body-boarding with two friends near the Gloucester side of the beach around 1:30 p.m. when he heard screams for help from a group of girls in the water near Cape Ann Motor Inn.

A life-long surfer familiar with the Long Beach currents, Twombly, 26, looked to the corner of the beach and saw four pre-teen girls with body boards and two middle-age men struggling to keep contact with the beach.

"I said to my friends, 'We have to go over there and help them,'" Twombly said yesterday. "The shape of the beach makes a current that goes by the rocks that surfers use in big surf in the winter to get outside. I knew that was what they were caught in."

Twombly and his two friends, fellow surfers Max Lott and Jason O'Connor, paddled on their body-boards toward the struggling group of bathers, who were slowly being pulled further and further from the beach and toward the sea at Brier Neck.

Propelled by the swimming flippers used by body-boarders, Twombly grabbed the youngest girl and paddled her back to the beach. Lott and O'Connor helped bring in another one of the girls and one of the men in distress, while a Gloucester surfer, at this point unidentified, grabbed his surfboard from the beach and used it to bring in another girl.

"It felt like it all happened in 30 seconds, but it probably took at least 10 or 15 minutes," Twombly said. "The lifeguards eventually called the cops and the harbormaster, who was there in his boat trying to get the last girl out."

As the Rockport harbormaster's boat struggled to get the last girl out of the water without being swamped by the heavy surf, Twombly had gotten hold of an 11-foot soft surfboard, paddled it out to the girl and carried her in on the nose.

Striding back on to the beach, exhausted, Trombly received a round of applause from the 50 people who had gathered to watch the rescue.

Yesterday, Twombly said rescues at the Gloucester corner of the beach — which would be have been filled with surfers were they not banned during the day — had become a relatively regular occurrence.

"I think all of the locals have had to grab tourists from that corner in the past," said Twombly, who now lives in Magnolia and teaches social studies at New England Academy in Beverly. "My friend grabbed someone last week. People are not aware there is a rip(tide)."

Around the same time, roughly a half mile down the beach on the Rockport side, Andrew McCarthy of Wakefield was returning from his moored lobster boat with two friends in an aluminum dinghy when he noticed a 12-year-old boy calling for help in the waves, drifting away from the beach.

"We were rowing back by the rocks and I saw a kid getting dragged out," said McCarthy, whose family has a cottage on Glenmere Road. "He had lost his boogie board and he was starting to panic and yell for help."

The boy was Logan Trupiano of Broadway Terrace in Rockport, who had been body-boarding with two other boys when the tide changed and the currents dragging swimmers out to sea at the Gloucester corner of the beach began acting on the Rockport side.

One of the boys, Christopher Ambrose, 11, of Rockport, was able to claw his way back to the beach and another 11-year-old Rockporter, Adam Rudolph, made it to the rocks by Cape Hedge where his mother, Allison Rudolph, plucked him from the water.

McCarthy rowed toward Trupiano and dragged the struggling swimmer on board, but in the effort his boat was turned broadside to the waves and was swamped by an incoming breaker. McCarthy dragged Trupiano in to the shore, where the 11-year-old was shaken and scratched from getting thrown from the boat, but otherwise unharmed.

"I was under for 10 seconds and Drew grabbed my hand and brought me back into the beach," Trupiano said yesterday. "Another kid risked his life to save mine."

Yesterday, the waves continued to roll in at Long Beach and on the waterfront across Cape Ann.

Gloucester police on four-wheel all-terrain vehicles were patrolling the sand, where beachgoers were told to abstain from body-boarding.

But despite the warnings, Rockport Harbormaster Scott Story said he had been called to rescue of body-boarders who had gotten in over their heads around 3 p.m.

Story said based on the forecasts he had seen, he expected there to be surf over the weekend.

He said if there was one piece of advice he could give beachgoers it would be: "Know your limits."

Patrick Anderson can be reached at panderson@gloucestertimes.com

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