Disasters at sea
Titanic anniversary reminds of changes in safety rules. B1
Palm Beach show Dynamic duo Couple combine career and life Vol.9, No. 1
B6
Shots from opening day at this year’s show
C5
www.the-triton.com
April 2012
Spark goes out in South Florida yacht industry
MAN PULLED FROM WATER
By Dorie Cox
M/Y Battered Bull was on scene moments after two cargo ships collided 25 miles north of the Dominican Republic PHOTO/CAPT. JEFF RIDGWAY in early March.
Passing yacht to the rescue after collision By Lucy Chabot Reed Toward the end of his pre-dawn watch on March 10, Chief Mate Ryan Wilson saw a cluster of lights a few miles ahead that got his attention. The ships were close together, but they likely would pass each other safely. Wouldn’t they? “We saw both targets on the
radar well ahead of time and we kept watching, expecting them to pass one behind the other,” Wilson said of he and his watch partner, Second Eng. Guy Dowling, on the 172-foot Battered Bull. “Before you knew it, we heard the Mayday call on the radio.” The two 500-foot cargo ships had collided. Wilson confirmed their position
What’s in your ditch bag? What crew take with them when abandoning ship Crew are trained to envision themselves in abandon ship scenarios and many did as they watched video of M/Y Yogi sinking in February. No one expects to see their boat sink or burn. When it does, crew evacuate. They get off with themselves, passengers and From the Bridge emergency survival Dorie Cox equipment; the ditch bag. “I picked up a couple in the water with nothing but their bathing suits,” a captain said of his experience rescuing
people who didn’t have a ditch bag when their boat sank. Whether you call it an abandon ship bag, grab bag or flee bag, you need one even for the smallest craft, a captain said at this month’s Triton Bridge luncheon. Individual comments are not attributed to any one person in particular so as to encourage open discussion. Attending captains are identified in a photograph on page A16. A ditch bag is the organized bag of survival gear that is easy to grab when abandoning ship. It usually contains
See BRIDGE, page A16
about — 25 miles north of Monte Cristi, Dominican Republic — and alerted Capt. Jeff Ridgway, who then headed toward the accident just as the sky was beginning to lighten to a calm and clear morning. They contacted the U.S. Coast Guard on the single side-band, and by the time the yacht
See RESCUE, page A8
When William Ward Eshleman was born in 1915, boats passed through a small, man-made cut to the Atlantic Ocean from Ft. Lauderdale, a town of about 3,000 residents. Boats had minimal electrical systems. When Mr. Eshleman, known as Senior, died in February, Ft. Lauderdale had grown into one of the busiest ports in the country with its waterways filled with megayachts. And Mr. Eshleman, his family and his company, Ward’s Marine Electric, had grown right along with it. In the mid 1930s, 20-year-old Mr. Eshleman moved to Ft. Lauderdale from New Jersey, just after the deep-water harbor of Port Everglades was built. He worked in electronics in the military but couldn’t enlist during World War II due to injuries from a motorcycle accident. Instead, he worked on the U.S. Navy’s PT fleet. After the war, he repaired generators on a green bean farm in the Everglades. When boaters needed help with their electrical systems, he hired an employee and they did that. When Broward County Sheriff Walter Clark needed help with his police car in the 1930s and 40s,
See WARD’S, page A17
TRITON SURVEY
Is the clearing in process different in different ports of entry? No – 15.5% Yes, always – 13.2% Yes, it can be – 71.4%
– Story, C1
Ward Eshleman Sr. holds a Bendix automatic pilot in a newspaper advertorial circa 1967 in an unidentified national magazine. PHOTO PROVIDED