Info Taken from Charles Dawson Facebook post. We are happy to report all crew members are safe and sound.
April 20, 2015
Hello Friends and Family of face book.. The last 2 days have been heart wrenching as everyone knows.. My boat the ATE UP was beached and not salvageable. Today we are making progress on getting the
Boat crushed and hauled out on trucks….I know there a ton of questions that have been asked
And first and for most the crew is safe.. We decided to run to the point to tuna fish on sat morning at 2 am.. 105 mile run down the coast.. While we were fishing my port transmission died on us grinding to a halt.
We left the point at 2 pm and could only run 9 mph on one motor. So that put us at rudee at about 3am.. The weather was very friendly with little rolling waves. We got about 17 miles out and encountered some heavy ass fog.. At times you could barely see the rods in the rod holders. Visibility was crap and after 7 hrs at the wheel I was getting very tired I had not slept a bit in 24 hrs so I decided to lay down for a quick nap.. Everything on the boat was soaked from the fog and moisture in the air. After sleeping for a bit I got back up on the bridge and the radar did not look right everything was bunched up and the plotter kept cutting off and cutting back on. I believe the moisture was causing this because I have never had this happen before. And we have made this trip many times before all of us doing our part as a crew..
My buddy David Toombs was at wheel and with 0 visibility and the electronics cutting off we really were running blind.. Within a couple min of me being up something was not right so I opened the curtain up to look out the front to see if I could see anything and when I did it was too late. I could see the breakers crashing on the sand bar. With one motor we tried to back out but only did a circle and were beached. Very scary stuff. Little did I know I would have to say goodbye to my boat forever. When you are out on the ocean bad things can happen very quickly. My buddies Chase Robinson and Phil Casone started getting poles and reels off the boat when we knew we were in trouble.. Us as a crew there is no I on my boat we are a team. We did all we could do to right the situation and as Jake Hiles had stated before the boat was full of water and could not be moved.. So here I am today writing this post to let everyone that came to help me out know that I thank each and everyone of them. Va beach divers,the Va beach marine police, the USCG, the Va beach fire dept, Jake Hiles, I just want to thank all of you on FB for the outpouring of love and support.
There has been to many post and tex than I will ever be able to return.. Thanks again for all the support. Trust me this is Not the end of my fishing excursions.. This hurts but I will come back stronger.. I maybe down but don’t count me out.
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