A Maine fishing boat that sank with all hands 50 miles southeast of Nantucket was top-heavy, the Coast Guard said in its final report on the tragedy.
The official investigation of the Oct. 10, 2003, disappearance of the 46-foot wooden vessel CANDY B. II fell short of definitively concluding that adding two paravanes (booms) left the boat unstable. But “a crew member stated the vessel heeled severely when the dredge was hauled aboard,” the report said. The new gear and rigging were added the year before CANDY B. II was lost. At the time, owners were apparently warned the rig might be unsafe, the Coast Guard investigation revealed.
The CANDY B. II was scallop-fishing out of Providence, Rhode Island when she was lost. Speculation that she might have collided with another vessel was discounted by the Coast Guard report. Only a boot and radio beacon were recovered after the boat sank.
Aboard the CANDY B were Captain Howard Crudell, 38, of Warren; Ralph Boyington, 34, of Waldoboro; Adrian Randall, 25, of Rockland; and Brandon Feyler, 17, of Union.
When the CANDY B. II was lost, it angered one state official. Those deaths were preventable, said Deputy Commissioner David Etnier of the Maine Department of Marine Resources. “It’s an awful tragedy — to have so many young people taken from a small area — it’s a horrific tragedy. But it doesn’t have to happen. There is no good reason for a loss at sea like that. There is no reason it couldn’t be avoided,” said Etnier, a former commercial fisherman.
The CANDY B II was built in 1950 at the Harvey Gamage shipyard in South Bristol, for Henry Jones. Norman Brackett of Bristol owned the boat from 1968 until 2002, and named it for his daughter, who has since died. At the time of her sinking the boat was owned by Scott Knowlton of Waldoboro and his partners.