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Wednesday December 8, 2010

Dominica Coast Guard rescues four men involved in boating accident

TheDominican.net Newsdesk

The Dominica Coast Guard is receiving praise after participating in the rescue of four US citizens who were on a fishing boat when an explosion occurred on the vessel. The men were found off the coast of Dominica, a few days after the accident.
jeremy donaldson
Jeremy Donaldson holds a mahi-mahi caught aboard the Nelson with crewman Kenneth Rudnick, before the vessel sank.

According to the United States Coast Guard, the four men left Port Canaveral, Florida aboard the Nelson en route to Grenada last Tuesday, with an unmanned fishing vessel Roamer in tow. Jeremy Donaldson, a crew member said a cargo container loaded with oxygen and acetylene welding gases on the Nelson's aft deck exploded.

No crew was injured, he said, but the Nelson was "just a mess. "The boat was taking on a lot of water into the engine room," Donaldson said. "We know that we had to do something to survive."

The crew scrambled to gather provisions, then hauled in the tow line to the Roamer. Seas were high and several attempts to hook a line between the Nelson's life raft and the smaller boat failed. Donaldson said that's when he jumped off the Nelson's stern, grabbed the Roamer's bow and muscled himself aboard. He then hauled the life raft and its three passengers alongside. Soon afterwards, the Nelson sank approximately 130 nautical miles south of St Croix, US Virgin Islands.


The US Coast Guard picked up the distressed signal and launched a search covering approximately 3,639 square nautical miles for the crewmembers – an area approximately the size of Puerto Rico and the US state of Connecticut – in response to the radio beacon alert. Rescuers from Venezuela and Curacao also participated in the search effort.

Without a fuel gauge and not trusting the boat's navigation gear, they motored east towards a chain of islands that was their best chance of making landfall before being swallowed by the open Atlantic Ocean. They lived on short rations and listened on the boat's radio as the U.S. Coast Guard conducted the search. They couldn't reply because the boat's radio transmitter was broken.

The Dominica Coast Guard, which had been alerted of the accident increased their patrols just outside of the island. Three days later they spotted the Nelson and located Rob Matthews, 64; Kenneth Rudnik, 59; David Brown, 21; and Jeremy Donaldson, 21. The men who were grateful for the rescue were escorted to the coast guard base in Roseau, Dominica. From there they were able to make contact with their relatives in the United States, and later flew out of Dominica.



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