Despite relatively mild weather on Wednesday, divers faced difficult conditions underwater and came up empty handed in their efforts to salvage a sunken boat off Trescott and locate the father-and-son fishermen who vanished over the weekend.
The boat is Sudden Impact, a scallop dragger that vanished as the duo was trying to motor it from Edmunds in Cobscook Bay to their home port of South Addison. The owners, Chester “Chet” Barrett and his son Aaron Barrett, are believed to have drowned when the boat sank in rough weather.
Dean Barrett, a fisherman who is Chester’s nephew and Aaron’s cousin, has been trying to organize a salvage effort to recover the vessel. Fishermen who participated in searches over the weekend with the U.S. Coast Guard and Maine Marine Patrol believe that depth sounder readings show that it sank in 160 feet of water off Moose Cove, between Cutler and Lubec.
Barrett hired a dive team to swim down to the wreck on Wednesday to see if it might be able to recover anything by hand — including the bodies of his uncle and cousin. But divers have not confirmed that their bodies are with the sunken boat.
Jeff Nichols, spokesperson for Maine Department of Marine Resources, said that despite cold but calm surface conditions, divers encountered strong currents at the bottom and had to resurface without recovering any items or getting visual confirmation that the boat is Sudden Impact — even though fishermen involved in the effort have said they are confident it is the Barretts’ boat.
Dean Barrett said late Wednesday in a text message that he hopes to try again on Thursday. The plan is to have divers recover what they can from the wreck site, and then for Barrett and another fisherman to use their boats to haul Sudden Impact to the surface.
“Hard chance down there to get anything done,” Dean Barrett said.
The section of Maine coast between Cutler and Lubec, which is nicknamed the Bold Coast, is known for offering little shelter to passing boats if they run into rough weather. There are no harbors or islands between the two ports, and the currents that run to and from the Bay of Fundy — which has the highest tides in the world — are strong.
