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A week ago today, it wasn’t a good morning for lobsterman Richard Bickford and his sternman William Deane Jr. Around 4:45 a.m. on July 15, their boat, the Kendra and Maysie, allegedly struck a ledge and began taking on water.

According to the Maine Marine Patrol, the two men deployed a life raft and escaped the sinking boat, but with no radio they were left exposed to cold and rain for the next 9 hours. Even though they were close to a group of islands off Maine’s Vinalhaven Island, pea-soup fog hid them from passing boaters, who also couldn’t hear the two stranded men calling out for help.

With visibility less than 200 feet, the life raft remained hidden until around 1:30 in the afternoon. That’s when a passing sailboat finally heard their cries for help.

“We heard someone screaming for help,” Matt Shannon told the Maine Marine Patrol. Shannon, who is from Rockland, was sailing with two crew members from Vinalhaven to Rockland on his 23-foot sailboat Kanosera. “At first I thought it was people messing with us.”

But the cries were for real. Out of the fog appeared the life raft with Bickford and Deane, who were brought on board and given food, water and dry clothes. “They were both in jeans and t-shirts, and the sternman was cold and shivering, so we put him in a sleeping bag to warm him up,” said Shannon.

Marine Patrol picked up the rescued men and brought them to Rockland, where they were met by fire and rescue personnel at the dock. Though exposed to the elements for 9 hours, neither man went to the hospital. The Coast Guard is investigating the sinking.

The story’s happy ending was thanks to good work by both Shannon and crew and the Marine Patrol. It’s also thanks to the lack of a motor on the sailboat. The Kanosera had been blasting an air horn to signal its location, but the quiet between blasts allowed the crew to hear the men’s cries. “If we had a motor, we would not have heard them,” Shannon said.

His statement reminded me of the feature I just wrapped up about sail power for our next issue. Justin Porter, who trolls from a sail-assisted boat in the Pacific albacore fishery, is a longtime commercial fisherman but also a huge fan of sail power, deploying them whenever he can. He told me sails save on fuel, provide stability and can be safer because if your motor dies you won’t be left stranded.

You can add sail’s quiet power to that list of benefits. It’s nice to be able to hear when you can’t see.

I’ll be sharing more about the story here, and you can read it in our September issue, which is going to press today.

Thank you to the Maine Marine Patrol for sharing this story.

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