SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Maine — A renowned 86-year-old boat builder and his wife were rescued Tuesday from a ledge off Seawall Point after their boat ran aground.
Ralph W. Stanley, who has received a National Heritage Fellowship for his craftsmanship, and Marion Stanley were mostly unscathed from the mishap and on Wednesday drove to Rockland to watch the Friendship sloop races, their son Richard Stanley said.
“They’re doing good,” he said.
According to Richard Stanley, his parents were headed to Rockland on Tuesday in the Seven Girls, a former lobster boat Ralph Stanley had built in 1960 for his father, Chester Stanley, when the 30-foot boat struck bottom at Flynn’s Ledge around 11 a.m.
The son said his father has navigated boats between the ledge and the shore “hundreds of times,” but that the fog and outgoing tide resulted in the boat being farther out from shore and closer to the ledge than his father realized.
Ralph and Marion Stanley both fell in the water as they were trying to use a small tender to get from their grounded boat to a nearby U.S. Coast Guard response vessel, according to a prepared statement released Tuesday by the federal agency. They were not wearing life jackets when they went in the water.
The 25-foot Coast Guard response boat was unable to pull up next to the grounded boat because of the shallow water, Coast Guard officials said in the release.
Attempts Wednesday to contact the Coast Guard for additional information were unsuccessful.
Richard Stanley said Wednesday that his parents called him from the ledge before they contacted the Coast Guard. Richard Stanley said he and his father-in-law, Kim Strauss, quickly went out in Strauss’ boat, the 24-foot Homeward Bound, to get his parents off the ledge.
Richard Stanley said his father had tried to row to the Coast Guard boat but the tide was too strong. The Coast Guard threw a rope to the elder Stanley and started to pull him in but he let go when he started getting pulled sideways because he was concerned he would flip, the son said.
His father then rowed back to the ledge, where his mother was standing in the water, but the rowboat flipped anyway as she and his father tried to get her in the boat.
In the prepared statement, Coast Guard Petty Officer Calvin Legge, a surface rescue swimmer who went in the water to get the couple, said the the situation went from bad to worse fairly quickly.
“Before we knew it, their row boat overturned and both people were struggling in the water,” Legge said in the statement. “We made an immediate decision to send me in to save them.”
Richard Stanley said his parents were standing in the water on the ledge when he and Strauss arrived on the scene. With Legge’s help, they lifted his parents on board Homeward Bound and then transferred them to the Coast Guard boat, Richard Stanley said.
“It was a little scary, alright,” Richard Stanley said.
But, he added, the mission was not yet done. Richard Stanley went back to the ledge, jumped off Homeward Bound and went onto Seven Girls to get his mother’s purse. After his mother and her bag were reunited, he — with the help of additional equipment brought to him from Bass Harbor — secured the boat on the ledge.
Around 9 p.m. Tuesday, Richard Stanley and others floated the boat off the ledge as the tide was coming in and towed it to Bass Harbor. On Wednesday morning, he said, they hauled Seven Girls out of the water to assess how badly it was scraped and dented by the rocks.
Richard Stanley, an accomplished boat builder like his father, said the damage appears to be minor.
“I’ve got to clean her up a little bit,” he said of the boat. “We’re very lucky.”
