ASBURY PARK PRESS
Five people were rescued from a life raft today after their 42-foot boat sank 80 miles off the coast while they were fishing in Hudson Canyon.

The crew of the Made to Sea left Irwin's Marina in Red Bank Tuesday and were fishing on the western end of the canyon at about 1:30 a.m. when the boat began to take on water, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. All five aboard donned life jackets and were able to make it into a life raft before the boat sank.

About 30 minutes later, the crew of the Fat Cat - a charter boat that set out for an
overnight tuna fishing trip on Tuesday - came upon the life raft and saw a distress flair.

"We had received a mayday call and we checked the (Made to Sea's) last position and saw that we were less than five miles away. We picked up our gear and ran out there,'' said Bill Boardman, the Fat Cat's second captain. "We got there and didn't see anything so we headed downwind, toward the direction that a boat would drift. Then we came into a debris field and about a quarter-mile in there was a flare shot off by the guys in the life raft.''

Though the Made to Sea's Electronic Position Indicating Radio Beacon was new, functional and registered, the crew had been unable to manually activate it, said Petty Officer 2nd Class Justin Henry, a crew member of Coast Guard Station Shark River.

"The EPIRB was stuck aboard the boat and was manually deployable,'' Henry said. "They couldn't get to it in time.''

Those aboard were able to grab a hand-held radio and put on the life jackets, two things Henry credited with their survival.

"If it wasn't for their preparation, this rescue wouldn't have gone as well,'' he said.

Compounding the difficulty of locating the life raft was what Boardman described as the "total, inky black'' of the sea during the early morning hours.

"You can't even describe how dark it is out there. There's no lights from the city, the
moon had just set,'' he said. "There's nothing darker than out there.''

The Coast Guard was unable to provide the names aboard the Made to Sea, but Boardman said all five of the men rescued were uninjured, though a "little shaken up.''

After the rescue, the Fat Cat continued contact with the Coast Guard and brought those rescued back to their own home port in Belmar.

"When you hear that distress call, you instantly go into rescue mode. If somebody's in trouble out there, you have to go help, there's not even an option,'' Boardman said. "It was quite an adventure. One I'll never forget.''