Lobsterman’s 12 harrowing hrs. in sea
AFTER MORE than 10 hours in the frigid ocean 40 miles south of Montauk Point, John Aldridge didn’t know if there was any fight left in him.
It was at that moment when the cruel sea taunted him with salvation — only to snatch it away. No more than 400 yards away he spied the Anna Mary, his lobster boat, the one he’d tumbled overboard from in the wee hours of the night.
His crewmate Mike Migliaccio stood on the roof, binoculars plastered to his face, desperately scanning the sea. Migliaccio was a man possessed. He knew Aldridge’s time was running out.
How was it possible Mike didn’t see him? Aldridge had spent all his energy affixing himself to a colorful buoy. But the ocean’s glare hid Aldridge from sight, and the Anna Mary steamed away.
“A Speck in the Sea” is the personally narrated account of Aldridge and his partner Anthony Sosinski about July 24, 2013, a day the unthinkable happened.
The pair were boyhood friends and dedicated lobstermen who teamed up to buy the Anna Mary in 2001. Both knew men who’d gone out to sea and never returned.
The new book is also the gripping tale of a massive and dramatic rescue operation mounted not just by the U.S. Coast Guard, but Aldridge’s fellow fishermen. They swarmed the sea in an against-the-odds search for one of their own taken hostage by the ocean.
It was about 3 a.m. that Aldridge, 45, decided to tend to a maintenance task on deck. Two commercial-sized coolers loaded with ice were in his way.
Attaching a plastic handle and using a long-handled hook, he squatted low to put all his weight into yanking the heavy load a few feet forward.
It was on the second pull that the plastic handle broke. Aldridge went flying backward toward the open hatch, and momentum plunged him into the deep.
He screamed for Sosinski and shouted obscenities as he watched the Anna Mary steam away. Muscles clenched in despair, his eyes foraged for something, anything, to keep him afloat.
Finally, his brain kicked in. By plunging his emptied boots into the ocean, he created flotation devices. The boots weren’t on his feet, but Aldridge had taken his first step toward survival.
Not that it felt that way.
“I’m probably going to die,” he recalls thinking. “Anybody who makes a living on the ocean knows that these things don’t end well.”
In the U.S., 210 commercial fishermen died after falling overboard in a 14-year stretch dating from 2000.
Migliaccio — the third in their three-man crew — hit the deck sometime before 6 a.m. Sosinski came awake to Migliaccio’s terrified face, screaming that Johnny wasn’t onboard. Sosinski threw the Anna Mary into reverse course before making the distress call to the 6:22 a.m.
Panicked, he found himself almost at a loss for words.
“Anna Mary. I just woke up,” he managed to get out. “Uhhh, I’m missing my crew member, John Aldridge.”
Beyond coordinates, Sosinski didn’t have much to offer. He didn’t know what Aldridge was wearing (a T-shirt, board shorts and cheap athletic socks). And he didn’t know when his partner went overboard.
That last detail left the Coast Guard confronting a huge Coast Guard at swath of the ocean to search, dramatically lessening Aldridge’s chances of survival.
The Coast Guard established a search track line following the Anna Mary’s movements from 9 p.m., when Sosinski last saw Aldridge, to the moment the boat reversed course.
An MH-60 helicopter, along with an airplane, a 47-foot motor lifeboat and a smaller boat initiated the rescue operation in the early-morning hours.
Meanwhile, Aldridge was plotting his own survival maneuvers. The dawn had been too long coming. He’d never been comfortable in the water, and the sudden arrival of a flock of storm petrels made things worse.
Aldridge fought off the small birds when, guided by moonlight, they dive-bombed his head. He soon gave up, reminding himself the ocean was their element, not his.
Floating in its vastness in the middle of the night, knowing no one was looking for him, was almost been too much to bear. Over and over he told himself, “Live till daylight.” It became a prayer as much as a mantra.