BELLINGHAM - A 33-foot fishing boat ran aground late Monday night, Sept. 12, and ended up on its side in Bellingham Bay.
A good Samaritan helped get the crew off the boat, the Long Island II, which struck the bottom in shallow waters about 3,000 feet off the beach between Cliffside Drive and a former cement plant on the waterfront.
Fisherman Jason Lake got a call from the captain of the grounded boat at about 1 a.m., after it had been stuck for some time. Lake, a Mukilteo resident who has fished in this area for about 20 years, went to help as soon as he heard the news.
"He's a friend of mine," Lake said. "Even if he wasn't a friend of mine, when another fisherman is in distress you need to do what you can to help them and get them out of a bad situation."
Lake helped get the captain and two crew members off the boat and brought them to shore with a Coast Guard escort. He said the boat captain has been gill-net fishing for about 40 years, but this was his first season in the area. Usually he fishes around Seattle.
The shallow waters around the boat made responding difficult for the Coast Guard. It could only get within 500 feet of the boat in its first attempt to approach because of the water's depth.
The Coast Guard deployed incident-management personnel to work with the state Department of Ecology and monitor the situation as it progresses, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Lt. Regina Caffrey. The boat had a 50- by 200-foot light sheen around it, and the Department of Ecology was determining the best way to handle any fuel leaks in the shallow waters.
The boat has a fuel capacity of about 200 gallons and was believed to be carrying about 175, said Ecology spokeswoman Katie Skipper.
Bellingham's Top to Bottom has been hired to refloat the boat. They should be able to recover the boat at high tide, which is at 6:24 p.m. Tuesday.
The plan is to plug the vent that is leaking fuel, put absorbent booms around the boat and get it upright and floating. The work will have to be done carefully because the boat is in an environmentally sensitive area that provides a potential home for eelgrass, Dungeness crab, shrimp and Coho salmon returning to the Nooksack River.
