home

A familiar trawler will no longer tie up at the docks of Garland Fulcher Seafood in Oriental.

Or anywhere.

The “Captain Alex” sank near Jarrett Bay last week. The 66-foot wooden trawler was one of nine boats in the fleet owned by Oriental mayor — and seafood plant owner — Sherrill Styron.

The Captain Alex rests on her side at the bottom of Adams Creek

Michelle Noevere, who works in the office at Garland Fulcher, says that the captain of the “Captain Alex”, Tracy Caton, and his stepson Grayson Rogers had taken the trawler from Oriental to Jarrett Bay on Sunday, July 30th. They were planning to have the boat hauled on Monday to have its prop checked and then head out to catch shrimp.

But when they got to Jarratt Bay, Michelle Noevere says, the docks were full of pleasure craft. The captain of the “Captain Alex” was told to tie up to the nearby pilings, she says.

It’s an area where some barges and recreational boats have been known to tie up.

However, they may not have had the “Capt Alex”‘s nine-foot draft.

Michelle Noevere says Tracy Caton was in the wheel house and his stepson was on deck trying to lasso the piling with the line. The captain went out to help, putting the boat in neutral, as is common practice, she says.

“Within seconds he heard the crunch.”

The wooden trawler “just crunched up” on an outcropping under the water, she says. There was a 2-foot by 2-foot hole in the hull of the “Capt. Alex”.

Tracy Caton got on the phone to the boat’s owner, Mayor Styron, to figure out where to go, but by then he also was seeing smoke coming from below. Grayson Rogers checked the engine room and found it “full of water.” (The bilge alarm did not go off, Michelle Noevere reports, until the water was at the level of the deck.)

“It went down fast,” she says, “within 20 minutes.” There was just enough time for the captain, Tracy Caton to grab some things from down below.

At the last minute, she says, “the captain and his crew had to jump on to the deck of a boat nearby.”

Tracy and Grayson were okay, she says, but the “Capt. Alex” was totalled. The 27-year old trawler was floated back to the surface and is now on the hard near the harbor at Jarratt Bay, she says, adding that the wooden boat may be “chopped up”.

The “Capt. Alex” had been part of the mayor’s fleet for a few years. It was built in 1979 in St. Augustine, Florida. It was 66 feet long and 20-1/2 feet in beam. It had a net weight of 67 tons and a gross weight of 99 tons, meaning it could handle about 60 thousand pounds or 30 tons of fish.

The Captain Alex in happier times, proudly tied up in the Oriental harbor

The boat was named after Sherrill and Phyllis Styron’s grandson, Alex. Ironically, the Styrons are currently visiting 13-year old Alex in Peru, where his father Mike Styron works as a missionary.

—-

July was not a good month for boats in the mayor’s fleet.

In early July, the Lady Phyllis, named for Mrs. Styron, had engine trouble while off of Massachusetts.

TownDock file photo

The crew kept fishing for scallops — a precious commodity — because they had several thousand more pounds they could catch before reaching the legal limit of 18,000 pounds. The crew managed to keep up with the engine problem by pumping the water out. But ultimately, the engine block cracked and the Lady Phyllis had to be towed to shore in Hampton, Virginia, where, once the scallops were off-loaded, the boat was taken in to be fixed. Michelle Noevere says the Lady Phyllis has another week of repairs ahead.

Posted Monday August 7, 2006 by Melinda Penkava

email this story | back to top