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The race to save the Mary Lynn
A glow in the mist
The story so far: The Madeira Beach fishing
boat Mary Lynn and its crew of three is trapped
in the path of Hurricane Katrina as the storm
moves into the Gulf of Mexico. When a big
wave hits, captain Mark Gutek sets off the
emergency beacon. A Coast Guard helicopter
prepares to fly into the hurricane in an attempt
to rescue the crew.
By CURTIS KRUEGER
Published October 25, 2005
Lt. Craig Massello gathered his co-pilot, flight mechanic and rescue swimmer inside a hangar at the U.S. Coast Guard's Air Station Clearwater, and gave them a simple message:
Speak up. On this mission, if anyone feels uncomfortable, let me know.
All of them understood it was an audacious plan. They would have to fly into a lethal storm, and then figure out how to lower a rescue swimmer to pluck the three people, one by one, from a churning sea.
At 11 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26, Massello launched the orange and white HH-60 rescue helicopter with his crew and two freelancers who were filming a show for the Discovery Channel. The Mary Lynn was roughly 190 miles away, about a 90-minute flight in ideal conditions. But Massello planned to fly south to skirt the hurricane, and then cut west, which would add miles to the trip. Massello guessed they would spend at least 21/2 hours battling their way through Katrina.
If they could.
* * *
In the darkness, the crew of the Mary Lynn furiously bailed water with five-gallon buckets. So much sea had poured in after the big wave, the water inside the boat was almost level with the water outside the boat - maybe an 18-inch difference. They all feared the boat could sink.
"All it would take was one more wave," Anita Miller said.
"That was the point where you got it in the back of your mind maybe you may not make it back," Charles White said.
Miller, White and captain Mark Gutek went into the wheelhouse for refuge, but rain shot through the damaged door, "like someone was hitting you with a whip," Miller said. She came up with the idea of tearing plywood off a bunk and lifting it to the door so they could keep the rain out, and protect the radio that was their lifeline to help.
A U.S. Coast Guard C-130 airplane arrived and began circling overhead. In the stormy night, the Mary Lynn 's crew couldn't see the big plane but they could hear the pilot on the radio. He told them help was coming.
A life raft sat on the canopy of the Mary Lynn , deflated and packed in a square plastic case. It was supposed to pop open automatically if it went underwater. But Gutek didn't want to wait. If the Mary Lynn started going under, he wanted the raft where the crew could get to it easily.
Gutek climbed up to the canopy and lowered the raft onto the deck. Then he went inside the wheelhouse to talk on the radio.
"By the time I took three steps into the boat the f------ life raft exploded. Deployed. Pow, that's all I heard."
No line tethered it, so the raft flew away. It worked perfectly. The inflated raft landed upright in the water and its strobe light began blinking in the blackness. Gutek and Miller swear the empty raft actually made an eerie journey around the Mary Lynn , somehow traveling against the wind.
The raft crossed the bow and disappeared.
"Seeing that fly away is like going, "We're dead,"' Miller said.
Now, if the Mary Lynn sank, their only hope would be to keep their life jackets on, tie themselves together and hope the Coast Guard could somehow find them in the water. Gutek started tearing a sheet into strips.
* * *
As they flew south toward Fort Myers, Massello and his crew stopped over another struggling fishing boat. After hovering about an hour, they concluded the boat could limp to shore, and were cleared to go on to the Mary Lynn .
Normally Massello and co-pilot Lt.j.g. David Sheppard look into a black radar screen with a few blips of green signifying bad weather, but this was different. The whole screen was green. Massello tried to spot the bands of the hurricane, green on darker green, so he could pick a path between them.
This was far from typical helicopter flying. In a Web site listing frequently asked questions about hurricanes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says: "It is most unlikely that anyone would attempt to fly a helicopter into a hurricane. Such aircraft are not built to withstand the severe turbulence encountered in hurricane rain bands and eye walls."
The ride was rough.
"The winds just kept building and building and you could just feel us constantly being blown off course," said Petty Officer Rob Cain, the flight mechanic. "And it's pitch black, too, so you can't see anything."
Finding the Mary Lynn was not hard, because of the C-130 that circled overhead keeping track of its position. Seeing the 41-foot boat was another matter. Using night vision goggles, co-pilot Sheppard barely spotted "a glow in the mist" from the boat's lights.
They hovered overhead but Massello soon realized he had a serious problem. The delay over the other boat and the fierce winds had eaten too much fuel. He was running out of gas.
Around 2:45 a.m., Massello radioed the C-130 to break the news. He would have to fly to Key West to refuel, at least a 90-minute round trip. Because of high head winds, an onboard computer now indicated they might not have enough fuel even to get to Key West.
Aboard the Mary Lynn , Miller took it hard.
"I didn't think they were coming back."
[Last modified October 25, 2005, 09:07:35]
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Above: Flight mechanic Rob Cain and rescue swimmer Kenyon Bolton, walking from one of the Coast Guard helicopters based at Air Station Clearwater recently, remember the Aug. 26 rescue well. Cain said "you could just feel us constantly being blown off course."
