Fatal Forecast: An Incredible True Tale of Disaster and Survival at Sea - Softcover

Tougias, Michael J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743297040 ISBN 13: 9780743297042

Publisher: Scribner, 2009

Synopsis

Now in paperback, a true story as spellbinding and harrowing as The Perfect Storm, “marvel- ous and terrifying” (Los Angeles Times)—published to herald the arrival of Tougias’s new hardcover, The Finest Hours. 

On   the   morning   of November  21,  1980, two  small  boats  set out  for  Georges  Bank,  a  lucrative but perilous lobster fishing ground off the coast of Cape Cod. The National Weather Service had forecast typical fall weather, and the young, rugged crewmen aboard the Sea Fever and the Fair Wind had no reason to expect that this trip would be any different from the dozens they’d made earlier in the season. But the only weather buoy in the area was malfunctioning, and the National Weather Service had failed to reveal this critical detail. And as the two small boats headed out to sea, a colossal storm was brewing to the southeast, a furious maelstrom that would batter the boats with sixty-foot waves and hurricane-force winds. A true story of catastrophe and survival at sea, this is a vivid moment-by-moment account of seventy-two hours in the lives of eight young fishermen. Most amazing is the story of Ernie Hazzard, who spent more than fifty terrifying hours adrift on the stormy open sea. 

Gripping and heart-pounding, Fatal Forecast is an unfor- gettable true story about the collision of two spectacular forces: the brutality of nature and the human will to survive.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael J. Tougias is the author of a number of books, including Rescue of the Bounty: Disaster and Survival in Superstorm Sandy; Overboard!; The Finest Hours (with Casey Sherman), the basis of the major motion picture released in 2016; Fatal Forecast; and Ten Hours Until Dawn: The True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do. He is a sought-after lecturer who gives more than seventy presentations each year. He lives in Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

PROLOGUE

Georges Bank, located one hundred miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is one of the richest fishing grounds in the world. It is an oval-shaped plateau on the ocean's floor, roughly the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined. Sixteen thousand years ago, during the ice age, Georges Bank was land, not sea, a broad coastal plain connected to the rest of North America. Nearby Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were the largest hills in the region. As the glaciers melted and retreated, water filled in the deeper channels around Georges Bank, making it an island.Trapped on this enormous island of pine, juniper, and oak were land animals such as woolly mammoths, mastodons, moose, and caribou, whose teeth are today sometimes brought up in fishing nets. As the sea rose, more of the island flooded, and roughly six thousand years ago all of it was submerged.

Water depths on Georges Bank are irregular; in some places canyons plunge thousands of feet deep, while in other sections shoals of sand rise to within ten feet of the ocean's surface. Such shallow waters have led to exaggerated tales of fishermen claiming to have played baseball in ankle-deep water during low tide. The shoals are the very reason fishermen venture onto the Bank. Rays of sunlight can reach the bottom, allowing plankton to grow. Small fish gather to feed on the plankton and larger fish in turn prey on them.

The Bank's tremendous currents also contribute to the fishery by creating a high-energy environment of cycling nutrients and oxygen, but these currents, a swirling combination of tidal and surface waves, produce a constant turbulence when they collide over the sandy shoals. Many of the first fishermen to visit the Bank never went back, fearing the currents were too strong for them to safely anchor their boats. One early fisherman recounted a grim story of what happens when an anchor cable snaps. He was on board an anchored vessel in a storm when another boat, whose anchor had broken loose, careened past his boat. "The drifting vessel was coming directly at us....With the swiftness of a gull she passed by, so near that I could have leapt aboard. The hopeless, terror-stricken faces of the crew we saw but a moment."The doomed ship then struck another vessel and both went down. The Georges Bank fisherman closed his observation by writing,"We knew that many a poor fellow who had left Gloucester full of hope, would never more return."

Georges Bank is also dangerous because of its location in the Atlantic. On the eastern end of the Bank the warm waters of the Gulf Stream collide with the cold Labrador Current, creating swirling waves. Although the currents at Georges Bank are almost always rough, when strong winds are added, chaotic seas occur, particularly in the shoal waters where vicious waves suddenly crest and break. Fishermen who venture out to Georges Bank need a boat large and sturdy enough to handle these seas. Here, help, should you need it, is hours away, an eternity if your vessel is going down. Captains fishing Georges Bank understand this, and the smart ones keep their boats in tip-top shape and always have one ear glued to the radio, listening to each and every updated weather report. If a big storm is coming, they get out of its way -- fast.

The floor of the Bank is littered with rotted, rusting wrecks, and today's draggers must dodge them or risk snagging their nets. Some wrecks have been identified, but most are unknown. Year upon year, boats have a way of disappearing on Georges Bank. Even with radios, many vessels that sink give no indication of their coming doom. Something sudden and catastrophic happens, and the boat sinks within seconds, joining the hundreds of others on the bottom.

The deadly nature of Georges Bank is the trade-off fishermen must reckon with to get at catches richer than those found closer to shore. To fish the Bank one must accept the risk. This is not an environment for the fainthearted. The men who work the Bank are a rugged lot, who quickly develop a certain toughness that keeps fear in check. One of these men was thirty-three-year-old Ernie Hazard. What he endured on Georges Bank is nothing short of remarkable.Copyright © 2007 by Michael Tougias

Chapter 1

The Fair Wind Crew

Ernie Hazard was in his third year of offshore lobster fishing, and although thework was brutally demanding, he felt fortunate. The Fair Wind, a 50-foot steel lobster boat on which Ernie worked, was a meticulously maintained vessel equipped with the most modern gear and electronics. Equally important, Ernie enjoyed the company of his fellow crewmembers and his captain -- no one slacked off and everyone contributed to making the Fair Wind a very profitable boat.

On November 20, 1980, the crew was having dinner at the Backside Saloon in Hyannis, Massachusetts, enjoying a good meal before making the last trip of the season. The men had made close to thirty fishing trips to Georges Bank since theprevious April, and they were all looking forward to having the next four monthsoff. Ernie talked about going down to Florida to see his brother or possibly heading out to Carmel, California, to visit friends. Thirty-year-old captain Billy Garnos planned to focus on his new house and his fiancée. Rob Thayer, agetwenty-two, hadn't made any definite plans, but he hoped to travel, having spentprior off-seasons in such far-flung places as Labrador and Newfoundland. Dave Berry, the youngest crewmember at just twenty years old, lived up in Marblehead,Massachusetts, and he'd likely take a little time off to be with friends beforeworking at his father's wholesale fish business.

Ernie felt relaxed that night, quietly listening as the rest of the crew discussed their plans. Every now and then he made a joke or a wry comment. The others had come to enjoy his self-deprecating humor and quick, dry wit. They also appreciated the muscle and stamina packed into his burly six-foot frame. Hehad arms as big as most men's thighs, and he put those arms to good use hauling and setting lobster traps. He looked tough and perhaps a bit menacing with his muscular arms, piercing black eyes, and wild black beard, but his crewmates knewthat behind the gruff exterior was an intelligent and thoughtful man.

But Ernie was no saint, and occasionally he and Billy Garnos would pound down a few rounds of beers after a week at sea and raise a little hell. This was especially true after they'd managed to harpoon a swordfish in addition to catching lobster, when each had a wad of cash in his pocket. Neither man went looking for trouble, but some situations called for Ernie to throw a punch or two. After most trips, however, all Ernie really wanted to do was rest for a couple of days before heading back out to Georges Bank and the bone-numbing workof lobstering.

Although Ernie, at age thirty-three, was the oldest of the crew, the others hadbeen fishing just as long or longer. Ernie got his position on board the Fair Wind by simply answering a help wanted advertisement he'd seen in the newspaper three years earlier. He was single and living in Peabody, Massachusetts, bouncing from one factory job to another, making lightbulbs at the General Electric plant in Lynn and working for a concrete manufacturer. WhenErnie saw the advertisement for a crewman, he was between jobs, so he figured, What the heck, that's something I've never done.

The boat's owner, Charlie Raymond, worked alongside Billy Garnos and another crew member, so Ernie became the fourth crewman. Ernie had never been offshore,and on his first trip out he couldn't help but think that he had entered anotherworld as he gazed at the gray ocean stretching endlessly in all directions. Somenewcomers to commercial fishing get spooked and disoriented on their initial voyage when they realize how insignificant their boat is compared to theenormous seas. But Ernie was fascinated by the new experience, and CharlieRaymond and Billy Garnos kept him busy from the moment he set foot on the Fair Wind, teaching him everything they could. "They had me driving the boat," says Ernie, "which was a big deal for me. I'd never driven a fifty-footboat, and I loved every minute of it. Plowing through that vast open space was athrill, and I remember thinking this is absolutely incredible -- it was all so new and different."

Ernie's initial trip on the Fair Wind was also the boat's first of the season. When they reached the fishing grounds after a twenty-hour ride, Ernie learned what it took to make a living from the sea. "I wondered how long these people were going to work without taking a rest," says Ernie. "They seemed tireless." The boat was loaded with dozens of traps, and they had to bait eachone and then drop it down. There were twenty-two traps to a trawl (a set or string of traps), and on that trip they dropped three trawls, working throughoutthe day and well into the night.

As backbreaking as the work seemed, the next trip was even tougher. The crew hadto haul in the previously set traps, rebait them, then drop them over again.Ernie's hands had not yet developed calluses, and his tender flesh was in constant pain from pulling so much rope. He found he had muscles in his handsand forearms that he'd never felt before, and they ached incessantly. But he didn't complain. He already knew that this work was more rewarding than his manufacturing jobs. It paid better too, but that didn't matter to him; thesatisfaction was in the work itself, the ocean setting, and the guys who workedbeside him.

The trips fell into a pattern of five days out at sea, and then a day or two back in port. Ernie's skin quickly developed thick calluses, and the muscles inhis hands became so large he could barely touch his thumb to his smallest finger. Charlie and Billy continued to teach him about the boat and lobstering, and Ernie soaked up as much as he could, enthralled by this new ocean world. Each trip was different; sometimes the North Atlantic unleashed an angry seriesof pounding waves, but other times the water remaine...

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0743297040
• ISBN 13: 9780743297042
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256