Captain describes tragedy at sea

By Eric McCarthy

FOR THE SOU’WESTER

Everything happened so quickly.

Recovering at home in Seacow Pond, P.E.I. on Wednesday, Casey Gavin recalled how a routine fishing trip suddenly turned tragic early Sunday morning.

Gavin, the owner of the ill-fated Toys for Big Boys, and two of his crewmembers had turned in for the night while Danny Ellsworth took charge of sailing the boat home to Tignish.

“I heard Danny saying, ‘You’d better get up. Something’s wrong.’”

“I looked to the stern of the boat. It was already under water.”

Gavin yelled to crewmembers Kyle Costain and Brian DesRoches to get up. “She’s going down,” he warned.

“I took the life raft off the cab of the boat. I threw it down and she blew up. The four of us got into her.”

The stern of the fibreglass boat was now submerged and the water pressure caused the wooden deck to break free.

The bow was out of the water 20 feet and then went straight down.

“From the time I got up and the four of us were in the life raft was less than a minute and the boat was gone,” Gavin related. “That’s how fast she went.”

The crew of four was in a life raft, but they weren’t safe. The weight of the ropes now sinking to the bottom caused the deck to flip over in slow motion, Gavin said.

“We were pushing with all we were worth,” but they couldn’t get out of its way.

The deck flipped over on top of their small craft, trapping the crew beneath it. Three of them were able to fight their way clear, but Ellsworth did not resurface.

There were ropes floating all around them, and they had to fight through. Gavin, a non-swimmer, was the first to make it back to the deck and helped Costain onto it.

They cut buoys free and threw them to DesRoches until he was able to grab onto one and get to the deck.

They called and called to Ellsworth but got no response.

For two hours, Gavin estimates, the three men braced themselves on the deck, the waves sometimes breaking over them. Pieces of deck kept breaking off and, as they did, their section of deck sank deeper, until they were neck-deep in water.

They had gathered up buoys and tied them together, figuring they’d tie themselves to them if their platform sank from beneath them.

The men had become aware their raft was beneath the platform and, when another piece broke away the raft resurfaced, upside down. It took all their strength to right it and climb inside.

Only after hearing a fishing boat in the distance did they set off emergency flares, preferring not to waste them in the fog.

The cause of the boat sinking has not been determined, but Gavin said Coast Guard personnel indicated a log was seen in the area, which left him wondering if that may have torn a hole in the side of his boat.

(Eric McCarthy is a journalist with Transcontinental Media’s Journal Pioneer, which is a contributor to the Sou’Wester.)