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he trawler “Emily Brooke” hit the concrete wall at Oriental’s Town Dock around 8:45 Saturday morning. The 83-foot long trawler crushed a 9-foot inflatible dinghy that visiting cruisers had tied to the wharf just moments earlier.

Not a common sight. The starboard side bow of the Emily Brooke where it came to rest along the Town Dock wharf.(Photo credit: Charlie Garrett)

The “Emily Brooke” went wayward as the crew was trying to move the trawler forward at the docks of the Garland Fulcher Seafood Company. Sherrill Styron, who owns the plant and the boat, attributed the incident to a crew member unaccustomed to being at the controls.

“I learned a long time ago,” Styron said, “that you come in slow and check your reverse.”

The “Emily Brooke,” where it shouldn’t be.

The captain of the “Emily Brooke” was not on board as he had gone home Friday night after bringing the trawler in from a week of fishing. Styron said the captain had planned to return Saturday morning for the unloading of the catch. On Saturday morning, though, the seafood plant was ready to unload that catch “quicker than anticipated,” Styron said. The captain hadn’t yet returned and it fell to a crew member to move her up to the off-loading spot.

The gears and controls of the boat had some quirks. “You have to sort of bump and pull it,” Styron said. In addition, he said that “something had come apart” in the transmission when the boat was put in to gear. That only compounded the crew member’s unfamiliarity with the controls and when he tried to maneuver the “Emily Brooke” by going into reverse, the boat wouldn’t respond and kept going forward and plowing in to the Town Dock.

Next, the focus was to get the deflated and soggy dinghy — and its motor — out of the water.

It is thought that the silted area near the wall may have slowed the trawler in the last few feet.

But it wasn’t enough to save the a cruising couple’s dinghy from being ruptured.

A little more room to get the dinghy out once the “Emily Brooke” found reverse.

A crowd gathered along the sidewalk after the impact and watched as the trawler did eventually find reverse and pull back. From among the spectators, a small team emerged to retrieve the dinghy from the water and save the Johnson motor that was permanently attached (thanks to rust) to the transom.

Many hands on.

Dinghy retrieval team. Donn Erickson and Ben Oponick who, along with others, helped Neville Clement retrieve the punctured dinghy and save the dinghy’s motor from sinking.

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The accident had many witnesses, several of whom shared similar impressions of looking up and noticing something very much out of the ordinary — the bow looming ever closer to the sidewalk.

Not a good moment for Peace.

Two of those witnesses were Annie and Neville Clement who live on the catamaran “Peace” and have passed through Oriental in the springs and falls of recent years. They’d anchored out Friday night and on Saturday morning docked their dinghy along the wall so they could get coffee at The Bean. Neville says he was “staring in to my coffee” when he heard others calling out that the large boat was where it shouldn’t be. Annie says that as the “Emily Brooke” approached, she thought, “That’s where we tied up our dinghy.”

Annie Clement gets to work, salvaging the five letters, PEACE. They’d been cut from an already curbed inner tube and were a good fit on the curve of the Avon. A little adhesive, she said, and they’ll be on the new dink.

At the Farmers Market just down the street, Jayne Stasser was selling biodegradeable bags and said she saw the “Emily Brooke“s bow approaching and thought, “That’s so pretty.” Then, a second later, another thought: “No that’s not. It’s coming in too fast.” Linda Parker said it brought to mind one of the “Airport” movies where a 737 plows through an airport terminal.

Visiting cruiser and Cruising World columnist, Wendy Clarke, says she saw a poof of smoke rise at the moment of impact. Whether that was the chunk of concrete (less than a foot long) that was chipped off or the chalky interior of the dinghy’s now burst tube is unclear.

At the wharf, a small chunk was knocked out by the “Emily Brooke”. It offers a marker for the incident. (Or as some cruisers have already noted, a place to leave older dinghies they wouldn’t mind having replaced.)

Neville Clement and Sherrill Styron.

Sherrill Styron, owner of the “Emily Brooke” was at the scene moments later, and told Annie and Neville Clement that he would “run down to West Marine” and replace their WM dinghy with a new one.

Neville Clement, after tucking the gear from the crushed dinghy in to the brand new one that the trawler owner bought for him.

A few hours later, Neville Clement was transferring the life jackets and other gear from the busted dink to the replacement. He and Annie were singing the praises of how folks had pitched in. It was, said Annie, “a nice ending to the morning.”

Neville Clement, new dinghy under him, leaves for his and Annie’s boat which was anchored out.

Posted Monday November 2, 2009 by Melinda Penkava

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