Just after midnight on Monday, the crew of a twin-engine U.S. Coast Guard jet squinted through the hurricane-force winds pounding the Canadian Atlantic Coast and spotted a life raft bobbing among the 10-metre waves.
Before foul weather and low fuel ultimately forced the twin-engine aircraft to return to its base in Cape Cod, Mass., the crew was unable to determine if anyone was in the raft, said Jared Carbajal, a spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard, in an email to the Post.
As of Monday night, it remains the last anybody has seen of the Miss Ally, a 13-metre halibut-fishing vessel carrying five young men from the southern tip of Nova Scotia.
Hopefully everything turns out for the good, said Eddie Nickerson, warden of the Municipality of Barrington, the 7,000-person community that the majority of the crew call home.
Reports of missing mariners are a harsh reality for communities all along the Atlantic Coast, but within recent memory, Mr. Nickerson said Barrington has never seen a marine disaster on this scale.
The feeling and the mood here is just down, and rightfully so, he said.
George Hopkins, the father of crewmember Joel Hopkins, told the Halifax Chronicle-Herald that he had been speaking to the vessel as recently as 10:30 p.m. on Sunday.
Only 30 minutes later, according to Halifax’s Joint Rescue Coordination Centre, the vessel was broadcasting its first distress signal.
By early Monday morning, two Canadian Coast Guard vessels Earl Grey and Sir William Alexander were heading to the life raft’s position, a patch of open ocean roughly 120 kilometres southeast of Liverpool. At first light, the vessels were joined by an RCAF Cormorant Helicopter from Greenwood, N.S.
Searchers were directed to the site by a data marker buoy deployed by the U.S. jet and configured to beam back data on local conditions.
There’s a wide search underway and the situation is evolving, Royal Canadian Navy spokesman Lt. Peter Ryan told The Canadian Press, adding that searchers were facing poor visibility and very challenging seas.
Social media reports and the Chronicle-Herald have identified the crew as Katlin Nickerson, Steven Nickerson, Billy Hatfield and Tyson Townsend in addition to Mr. Hopkins.
All of the men are from the Barrington municipal district save for Mr. Hatfield, who is reportedly from nearby Cape Sable Island, where the Miss Ally set out to sea six days ago.
It’s one of those things that affects the whole community, said Cathy Breen, principal of Barrington Municipal High School, where many of the crew had been students.
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