A 17-year-old boy from West Chester, Pennsylvania faces an alcohol possession charge after running a boat aground on Outer Thrumcap Island, off the southern shore of South Bristol, early Tuesday, July 22.
The boy was able to make it to shore with help from his friends. A local boatyard owner recovered the boat intact the next day.
South Bristol Fire Chief Mark Carrothers said he received a page at 12:42 a.m. regarding a boat taking on water.
“Four members of the South Bristol Fire Department went out of The Gut in a lobster boat to Outer Thrumcap Island and spent two hours searching for the boat,” Carrothers said.
U.S. Coast Guard Station Boothbay Harbor Officer in Charge William Armstrong said the boy was the helmsman and sole occupant of the 19-foot Triumph fiberglass boat. The station dispatched four Coast Guardsmen, who also spent two hours searching for the boat.
Neither the fire department nor the Coast Guard were able to locate the boat.
According to Carrothers, while the search was in progress, the boy used his cellphone to call a friend who, in turn, contacted a Bristol resident. The two men found the stranded juvenile and brought him to shore at the Coveside Marina and Restaurant on Rutherford Island.
“He was in extreme danger,” Carrothers said. “All he was wearing was board shorts, no shirt, no shoes.”
The boy told Carrothers his boat hit submerged rocks and began taking on water. He tied the boat to rocks, but it was uncertain how close to the shore of Thrumcap he was at the time. The boy called his friends and once he saw their approach, he swam out to his rescuers’ boat.
Carrothers said the concern was how long he had been in the water securing the boat and swimming. “Hypothermia would have set in with in 20 minutes of his being in the water,” Carrothers said.
The Coast Guard and fire department crews and Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office personnel met the boy and his rescuers at Coveside, Carrothers said.
The juvenile was not seriously injured, receiving only slight abrasions to the knees that required no treatment, Carrothers said.
Lt. Rand Maker, of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, said the boy was charged with possession of alcohol.
Armstrong said the Coast Guard station again dispatched a crew of four at 9 a.m. to continue the search for the boat. Their search proved unsuccessful and the crew returned to the Boothbay station by noon.
At 1:15 p.m., Armstrong was notified that the boat had been recovered.
Bittersweet Landing Boatyard owner Michael Nyboe said he recovered the boat in the Thread of Life, a channel off Rutherford Island.
“The hull of the boat was scratched and scraped, but totally intact with the motor still attached,” Nyboe said. He secured the boat to a mooring.
