PROVINCETOWN, MASS. (WHDH) - A good Samaritan is being credited with bringing four fishermen to safety Tuesday when their boat sank off of Provincetown.
The Coast Guard watchstanders received a panicked mayday call from a 34-foot fishing vessel that was sinking about two miles off the coast of Race Point, according to a post on their Twitter page.
“Luckily they got the mayday call off as fast as they did before the boat flipped over,” said Noah Santos, the president of Towboat US, who was one of the first to arrive to help.
When he arrived, Santos found the fishermen clinging to an emergency raft and their boat totally submerged.
“We’re happy we had a happy outcome,” he said. “That we saw four guys on the boat and they said, ‘We only had four guys, it was a win for all of us.”
No injuries were reported.
The harrowing capsize comes on the first day of lobster season. Santos said the crew was just trying to get their gear out when the boat started taking on water.
“They just said they had some water coming in underneath the decks and they couldn’t get the hatches up fast enough with all the gear up to figure out where the water was coming from,” he explained.
As it went down, all four men jumped ship.
“Three of them had their survival suits on the fourth one was trying to get his on,” Santos recalled. “They were lucky they did as well as they did.”
So far, the cause remains unclear.
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