CAPE ELIZABETH, Maine — The Tera Lynn II will never float again.
On Saturday, the ferocious storm battering the state’s coast drove the 50-foot fishing vessel onto the rocks at Trundy Point just after midnight. Grinding against an unmerciful ledge, the Terra Lynn II’s fiberglass belly shattered, scattering its engine, 500 gallons of diesel fuel and 5,000 pounds of fish all over the coast.
Fortunately, a rescue team from the Cape Elizabeth Fire Department was able to pluck all four crewmen off the disintegrating boat and bring them to shore, uninjured.
Now, the cleanup is underway.
It’s a complicated process, with lots of moving parts, which must take both logistical and environmental concerns into consideration, along with age-old laws of marine salvage.
Parker Poole and his company, Determination Marine, are in charge. Poole also heard the ship’s mayday call when it went out Saturday morning.
“I was changing fuel filters on one of my vessels. I was the first boat on scene here when it happened,” Poole said, standing in front of the wreck Monday morning. “But there was no way that we could get a line to him safely, without winding up on the ledge ourselves.”
Instead, Poole relayed information to the Coast Guard, which coordinated with the Cape Elizabeth Fire Department, which has a special team trained for such rescues.
“They were able to stage on the beach right over there and go out to the boat with a skiff and pull two people off, bring them to shore, and go back out and get the remaining two people before the weather window closed,” he recalled.
Poole said the scene was harrowing.
“I was sitting offshore in a 44-foot vessel, and we were getting thrown around pretty good,” he said.
Hired by the Portland-based Tera Lynn II’s insurance company, Poole and his crew began assessing the situation Sunday and were taking loose items off the boat Monday morning. Workers stacked shards of shredded fiberglass, fishing nets, hoses and absorbent materials soaked in diesel fuel on the rocky shore.
To go further, Poole needs to formulate an official cleanup plan and get it approved by the Coast Guard, the town and the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. He also must work with local landowners to get access to the wreck site.
Coast Guard Chief Ryan Koroknay is in charge of overseeing Poole’s efforts and said his largest concerns are for safety and the environment.
“We have no reason to believe there’s still a large amount of diesel fuel on board, but we want to be sure we have a plan in place in case,” Koroknay said. “And we’ve assigned a field investigator to determine the cause of the incident.”
The chief also said he wants to make sure workers are in as little danger as possible while conducting the salvage. The boat currently sits in a tricky spot, below the high tide mark, beyond a set of seaside properties.
“Unfortunately, the only way that we’re going to be able to do this is by dismantling the vessel on site,” Poole said. “We’re planning to use large excavators.”
The heavy equipment will smash and scoop up what’s left of the boat, and then dump trucks will likely haul the debris away. All the work must be done between tides and before the next storm hits. Poole thinks it could be underway in earnest by midweek and finish by the weekend, if all goes well.
Poole will not be keeping items of value he pulls off the boat. Maritime salvage operations work under a strict set of laws and codes, some of which date back to the 17th century.
“If I had been able to get a line on the vessel that night and tow them off the rocks, that would have been considered pure salvage, and we would have been entitled to a reward based on the value of the vessel because of the risk we took,” he said.
The Cape Elizabeth shoreline is no stranger to shipwrecks.
Another fishing vessel, the Alton A. wrecked near the same spot on Trundy Point in 1972. In 1947, a portion of the bow broke off the coal-hauling Oakley L. Alexander as it foundered west of the spot where the Tera Lynn II now sits. In 1864, the immigrant ship Bohemia went down on Alden Rock off Cape Elizabeth, with the loss of 42 lives.