One Cortez fishing fleet vessel spent Tropical Storm Debby at sea.
A rescue operation was launched Aug. 4 by the U.S. Coast Guard to find the fishing vessel and rescue the crew.
The vessel, the She’s A Belle, is part of the A.P. Bell Fish Co. fleet out of Cortez.
The boat and crew were adrift in hazardous conditions for several days.
Karen Bell, owner of Bell Fish Co., 4539 124th Court W., Cortez, spoke to The Islander Aug. 14 about the ordeal that began Aug. 2, before the storm’s arrival, with mechanical issues on the boat.
“The vessel had been out for about five or six days and started encountering problems with fuel,” Bell said. “I advised (the captain) to stay close to shore.”
The She’s A Belle and the four-person crew were fishing near the Tortugas, engaging in bandit fishing — a method requiring gear that drops long vertical distances. Bandit rigs are used to target reef species, such as grouper, snapper, triggerfish and amberjack. The gear gets its name from the resemblance to slot machines — aka one-armed bandits — in casinos.
The fishing was excellent, with the captain reporting catches of snapper.
However, the vessel began to experience communication difficulties and, as Debby intensified into a tropical storm, a call to return to port went unheeded.
Bell said offshore captains have multiple ways to communicate while at sea and she and the captain began using email. She also could see the boat through a vessel monitoring system that would use GPS to ping its location every hour.
“He emailed me saying his satellite phone wasn’t working. I advised him to move north and stay close to a larger boat, the Lisa Bell, which was nearby,” Bell said.
As the storm neared, the She’s A Belle experienced a problem with its radar system.
“The boat drifted and by the time Lisa Bell reached it, the storm was already hitting Cuba,” Bell said. “The (Lisa Bell) crew had to tow the She’s A Belle at a slow pace due to the rough weather.”
“They were only going 4 knots because it was even rougher and the weather was deteriorating,” she added.
During the night, the crew of the She’s A Belle resolved their fuel issue while under tow and they were able to get back under way on their own power.
With the engine working again, the She’s A Belle detached from the Lisa Bell.
Moving under power, both the Lisa Bell and She’s A Belle continued their way toward Cortez through Saturday night, Aug. 3.
Bell said sometime during the night of Aug. 3, the She’s A Belle began drifting east.
On the morning of Aug. 4, Bell woke to find the Lisa Bell within an hour of Longboat Pass.
But the She’s A Bell was just off Fort Myers, roughly eight hours behind schedule.
After speaking with the captain, Bell said the She’s A Belle began tracking north. But the vessel suffered another setback — its anchor line became fouled in the prop.
Now, without power and with the Lisa Bell too far away to render aid, the crew of the She’s A Belle had little recourse but to hold on and prepare to weather the storm without engines.
“The storm was right on their heels now and the weather was getting really foul,” Bell said.
Winds reached 40-50 knots and the boat and crew were tossed in 8- to 13-foot seas.
With no way to get the engine going, there was no way to keep the vessel’s bow into the waves and the captain had little control over the boat.
“She just floated, sometimes side, too,” Bell said. The waves were striking the boat from the side — heightening the risk of overturning.
“ I can’t believe she didn’t capsize but that boat’s very broad,” Bell said, referring to the width of the vessel’s hull. “It was a lot of rocking and really big seas.”
Despite the circumstances, Bell said the crew kept up efforts to maintain a positive outlook, taking inventory of repairs and damage to be assessed once the vessel was back to dock.
The first U.S. Coast Guard attempts to aid the vessel were stymied due to the weather. A 45-foot vessel initially dispatched from Station St. Petersburg Aug. 4 turned back near Egmont Key due to harsh conditions, Bell said.
Eventually, a Coast Guard cutter, the Diligence, took over the rescue mission and, on the night of Aug. 4, after enduring the storm’s fury and drifting offshore, the She’s A Belle was spotted near St. Pete Beach pushed by strong winds about 100 miles north from where the vessel originally lost power.
The Diligence watched over the She’s A Belle through the thick of the storm and the next morning, Aug. 5, a 45-foot Coast Guard cutter met the distressed vessel and began towing it toward Tampa Bay.
Bell said she dispatched another fishing fleet vessel, the Rachel Bell, to tow the vessel back to Cortez.
“The Coast Guard was incredible,” Bell said. “They went above and beyond and stayed close by to ensure the crew’s safety and assisted in the final stages of the rescue.”
Bell said the She’s A Belle was undergoing repairs in Cortez and the crew, as of Aug. 15, was back at work, at sea off the east coast of Florida on another vessel.
No rest for the weary.