Coast Guard identifies victims of weekend boating disaster

Published 1:30 pm Tuesday, April 28, 2015

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. (AP) — The search for four boaters missing since a powerful storm swamped a weekend sailboat race continued Tuesday as officials identified two victims as men from Louisiana and Mississippi.

The U.S. Coast Guard, state and local officials used boats and aircraft to search for the boaters in the Gulf of Mexico as far as 25 miles south of Dauphin Island. Volunteers walked the shoreline in search of anything the tide or waves might have washed in.

Authorities hoped the search, delayed Monday because of bad weather, could continue throughout Tuesday, with radar showing no storms. Searchers already have covered thousands of square miles of water.

The missing are from three boats participating in the annual Dauphin Island Regatta, officials said. While the search was still considered a rescue mission, it could become an operation to recover remains without signs of survivors.

The Coast Guard said the bodies of Kris Beall, 27, of Pineville, Louisiana, and Robert Delaney, 72, of Madison, Mississippi, already had been pulled from Mobile Bay.

The boat race went awry Saturday afternoon when a powerful storm moved through, killing two people, and officials said it’s unclear how long the missing could live in the Gulf.

Capt. Duke Walker, commander of the Coast Guard in Mobile, said survival depends mainly on the individual who is missing and the environment.

“The water temperature, the air temperature, the conditions on the water and then a person’s physical makeup,” he said. “So we have a lot of different people involved, a range of ages from a young man to an older gentleman.”

Regatta participants said that at first, Saturday seemed like a perfect day for sailing. But gray skies quickly turned black, and lightning popped. Skipper Susan Kangal said the wind spiked from about 20 mph to 73 mph — 1 mph short of hurricane force — and the 34-foot-long craft she was piloting heeled over on its side.

About the same time, as they headed back to shore after finishing the regatta, Connor Gaston and father Shane Gaston saw the wind yank the mainsail of their 16-foot catamaran. Within seconds, the boat flipped and dumped the men into the roiling, frothy bay.

“After that, we were in the water; we were holding on to the boat,” said Connor Gaston, 26, of Helena. “The boat’s being tossed around. We ended up cartwheeling around about three times.”

Unhurt but soaked, the Gastons eventually righted their little boat after about 30 minutes in the water and sailed back to shore with a broken mast. Once the storm passed, Kangal’s all-female crew of three women and five teens made it back safely to dock under engine power.

More than 100 sailboats of varying sizes and as many as 200 people were participating in the regatta when the storm hit. Sponsored each year by area sailing clubs that rotate organizational duties, the race begins in the middle of Mobile Bay and ends about 21 miles to the south near the bridge to Dauphin Island.

Kangal, 52, was at the helm of her ex-husband’s sailboat when the wind kicked up about 15 minutes after she got a call about the potential for rough weather. As is a common practice aboard sailboats with engines during storms, she lowered a sail and cranked the motor.

Then, she said, wind hit the boat like a hammer. The boat slammed over on its side, nearly overturning.

“It was frightening because at that point, in that second that that happened, I was laying on the back of the boat, between the wheel and the aft of the boat, and was standing up straight looking down at the water, watching the water starting to ease over the side,” she said.

Gaston and his father were wearing life vests, and they desperately hung on to the boat. The worst part wasn’t the wind or water, Gaston said, but the electricity that danced all around.

“We’re sitting there on the boat trying to get away from any type of metal that we could … ,” he said. “And I’m sitting there on the boat just waiting for a flash and a bang, and that to be it.”