Chris Estes has been taking boats in and out of Apalachicola, on Florida’s northern Gulf Coast, since he was a kid. But coming home on the night of June 25, the 45-year-old fisherman missed his marks and hit the rock jetty in Bob Sikes Cut, a boating channel between St. George Island and Little St. George Island in Apalachicola Bay.
“I been through there hundreds of times, in all kinds of weather, but there it was nighttime, flat calm,” says Estes. “I have a trust issue. If I’d trusted my radar I probably would have been alright. I didn’t think I was up in the cut as far as I was, and I saw the rocks on my left and steered over to the right, and then all of a sudden I saw the splash on the rock on my right and started to go the other way, but I had my outriggers down and the doors hanging off them and they caught and swung me right around into the rocks.”
Estes backed his 51-foot-long shrimper, named Mr. Ellis, off the rocks, but it was taking on water fast. He steered the vessel into the bay and put out an anchor. “I had my son who is 12 and my nephew who is 14 on board,” says Estes. “I got life jackets on them right away and called a friend of mine. He got over there and put his bow up to our stern and we stepped across. We got the boys right into Apalachicola,” he says. “They were scared. But they’re over it. They’re ready to go again.”
Two hours later Estes went back out to the Mr. Ellis on an oyster boat, “but we couldn’t do anything. Then we came out with a friend of mine with a big Cummins and he pulled us over to the west shoal.”
While the bow of the Mr. Ellis was on bottom at one point, the boat never went completely under, and Estes has it ashore now. “The engine was running when it went under,” he says. “But I only bent one rod and cracked one sleeve. It’s a 671 Detroit, I’ll rebuild it.”
Estes bought the boat in 2024 and had it for less than a year. He renamed it the Mr. Ellis after his early mentor Ellis Odom. “He let me run his boat when I was 14,” says Estes. “I went down one night, and he said he didn’t want to go. But he said, ‘You can take the boat and go if you want.’ I said, are you serious? I was excited as hell.”
With years of experience on the water, Estes kept his cool after the collision with the rocks and prioritized the safety of his young crew. “I thought that boat meant everything to me, but when we hit, all I was thinking about was the boys.”
Estes recalls that in the aftermath of the accident he wasn’t sure if he would have to write off the Mr. Ellis. “But then people started raising money for me. They raised $4,000 so far, and that gave me hope.” Estes is focused on getting the hull patched up and the engine up and running.
“But then there’s other things I want to do to her. I guess it’ll be a year before I get her back in the water. I’m a single father and I need to work while I work on her. I like my stuff to be right and tight so we’re not going back in till I have things the way I want them.”
One thing Estes hopes that will come out of the accident is lights for the jetties on Bob Sikes Cut. “They really ought to be lit up,” he says. “Maybe the Corps (of Engineers) will take a look at that.”
