http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/29/seas-too-rough-rescue-whale-watch-vessel-overnight/3aSK4gL7YX5uF4RPffaAlL/story.html
A three-hour whale watching tour out of Boston turned into an 18-hour overnight stay for more than 150 passengers when their boat became disabled after snagging a cable for a liquid natural gas offloading facility about 13 miles off the Massachusetts coast, the US Coast Guard said.
A spokeswoman for Boston Harbor Cruises acknowledged that the boat had strayed into a “restricted navigation area” and promised the company would cooperate with a Coast Guard investigation into the incident.
The boat left downtown Boston at 1:30 p.m. Monday and was scheduled to return at 4:30 p.m. It docked just before 8 a.m. Tuesday.
The Coast Guard dispatched two cutters to rescue the passengers on the vessel Cetacea, but authorities deemed conditions too dangerous to transfer them.
“The sea state wasn’t safe enough,” said Ross Ruddell, spokesman for the First Coast Guard District in Boston. “It was too windy, too choppy. ... We didn’t feel that we could safely transfer that many people.” Seas were running 2 feet with winds of just over 12 miles per hour, the Coast Guard said.
The cable that snagged the vessel was part of Excelerate Energy’s Northeast Gateway Deepwater Port, the Coast Guard said. The deepwater port is a facility where liquefied natural gas tankers can offload gas, which is then piped under the water to shore.
An Exelerate Energy spokesman didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.
The whale watch vessel was not supposed to be in the area of the cable, Ruddell said. He said the Coast Guard was investigating.
Sheila Green, spokeswoman for the cruise line, acknowledged that the boat was traveling in a “restricted navigation area” when its port propeller was fouled by a line used to moor vessels at the Exelerate facility. The line floats on the surface and is marked by buoys, she said.
“Immediately following the disembarkation of passengers, the US Coast Guard began interviews with the vessel captain and crew regarding the incident. BHC management will meet with the captain and crew after the US Coast Guard interviews are concluded and will cooperate with the US Coast Guard investigation and defer to its findings as to whether or not operator error was a contributing factor,” she said in a statement. Divers untangled the vessel’s propeller and the boat eventually limped into port.
Divers untangled the vessel’s propeller and the boat eventually limped into port.
Green said Northeast Gateway was a “valued client” of the cruise company “and that BHC has expressed its regrets to the passengers on board the Cetacea and to the owners of Northeast Gateway for yesterday’s entanglement.”
She said the company was confident the only damage “resulting from yesterday’s entanglement was to the port propeller on the vessel Cetacea and the Northeast Gateway Deepwater Port mooring line.”
“There was no LNG or [LNG regasification] vessel at the facility. This was not an LNG-related event in any regard,” she said.
Such an incident has “never happened before” in the company’s history, she said in an earlier interview. “Boston Harbor Cruises was founded in 1926 and has never had an incident like this before. When the vessel was dead in the water, they couldn’t do anything. Their priority … was to make sure everybody was safe.”
Green said the company sent two other vessels from its fleet of 44 to bring the passengers supplies. The boats stayed with the Cetacea overnight.
The company contracted divers to remove the 7-inch line from the propeller Tuesday morning, Green said. She did not know exactly what time the divers arrived but said they were working by 3 a.m. Tuesday on untangling the cable from the propeller.
The Coast Guard’s two cutters also remained next to the vessel overnight, with medical staff and resources on hand, though Coast Guard officials said no one required medical services.
“We stayed alongside and made sure that we sent over health professionals and evaluated all the crew members and all the passengers on board to make sure there were no urgent medical issues that needed to be attended to,” said Karen Kutkiewicz, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.
Ken Maguire of Falls Church, Va., a freelance journalist who was on the boat with his wife, Marie Blanchard, and their daughters, Eloise, 9, and Matilda, 6, said the mood of passengers got progressively worse.
“A lot of people were throwing up,” he said. “There was an 18-month-old baby that couldn’t keep her food down. One lady threw up 15 times. People were throwing up overboard. There were people throwing up into bags at their tables, then they put their head down and someone came and got it. It was gross at first, then it became commonplace,” he said.
The divers untangled the propeller and the boat eventually limped into port.
When the boat was freed and returned to land, the mood improved, Maguire said, “It was good. I didn’t see anybody running and kissing the ground. But you know, people were obviously happy.”
Green said the 157 passengers on board the ship would receive a refund of about $50, a $100 gift card to any Boston Harbor Cruises cruise, and $500 in cash.
Hurt
