Fin Seeker, A Recent Shipwreck – By Captain Dale Bennett

The story of the fishing charter, Fin Seeker, is the story not only of the capricious and savage power of the Great Lakes but also of the heroism of a charter captain and members of the US Coast Guard rescue teams.

Early on a crisp spring morning in 2008 six employees of Nova Communications of Geneva, Illinois arrived at Waukegan’s north harbor. It was the last Friday in May and they had taken the day off for a team building outing. This year’s outing was to be a morning of salmon fishing. Nova’s owner, Jim Emma, had chartered the largest of the charter fishing boats in Waukegan, Fin Seeker, a 39 foot Sportcraft with a 14 foot beam powered by two 454 Mercruiser engines. He figured that the biggest boat in the harbor would also be the safest.

Jason Lee, captain of Fin Seeker met them at the iron gate which is the entrance to the main pier. Captain Lee, a big man with a ready smile, had lived on Fin Seeker offering fishing charters for the past eleven summers. He spent his winters as a missionary in the Philippines with his wife. The captain quickly got his customers situated on the boat. He helped them to stow their coolers of beer and snacks and find places for their personal gear. Fishing licenses were purchased and the boat was made ready to get underway. Just before leaving, the captain checked the weather forecast one last time. Storms were predicted to the north but only overcast skies in the Waukegan area. The forecast called for five to ten knot winds from the southwest with one to three foot waves. Lee came topsides and declared, “Perfect fishing weather.”

At about 10:00 am Fin Seeker got underway and headed out of the harbor and southeast into Lake Michigan to find a gentle wind and one-foot swells. They joined seven other fishing boats that were trolling back and forth in about sixty feet of water, two or three miles out into the lake. Gail Burk, the office manager, caught a nice 8-pound king salmon. They were all having a great time, with no inkling of what was about to happen.

Lake Michigan is a witch and can change from a lamb to a screaming banshee in less time than it takes to tell about it. That is exactly what she did that morning in May. As a weather front passed over their position, the wind slammed against the small boat and the waves tripled in size. Within minutes the wind was up to a sustained velocity of 60 to 65 knots. Some gusts were topping 80 knots. Waves built to 10 to 12 feet in height, with some as high as 15 feet. Later it would be determined that this was due to a relatively rare weather phenomenon called a “wake low.” A wake low forms when a storm front advances particularly fast and forms an unusually deep low pressure area just behind it. Strong winds result from air rushing in to fill in the low pressure trough in the wake of the weather front. The captain, however, did not have time to consider why the weather had changed; he was busy trying to deal with it. He got the fishing lines in and started to head back in to the harbor.

It quickly became clear to Lee that he could not make Waukegan. The wind and waves were coming from the southwest. If he headed north the huge waves would break over his stern and flood the boat. The small scupper drains were no match for the tons of water that would pile up on the deck. Instead he turned south, putting his bows to the waves, hoping to make his way to the harbor at the Great Lakes Naval Training Base. It was then that a particularly large wave crashed into the boat and broke through the port windshield. He yelled to his passengers to break out the life vests and put them on. Another wave slammed into the boat, slewing it around and breaking away the starboard windshield. Lee picked up the radio and called the Coast Guard. He was having trouble just staying at his position at the helm. The waves were coming every few seconds and when they crashed through the broken windows and flooded over him he could not even breathe. After a few minutes the engines, now nearly under water, quit. He knew the boat could not remain afloat. Captain Lee was about to loose his business and his home but more important was his responsibility for the lives of his passengers. He was concerned that they would be pulled down, trapped or entangled when the boat went down, so he had everyone assemble on deck and then get into the water. He went back down into the cabin to make one more “mayday” call to the Coast Guard and give their last position.

Captain Lee had just finished making that last call to the Coast Guard when the boat starter to go under. Water rushed into the cabin and pinned him back against the bulkhead. He pushed up against the overhead to take one last gulp of air and then, struggling against the force of the water, he pulled himself through the broken windshield. His hands were cut but he struggled forward, ripping his life vest in the process. He broke free but he was completely underwater, sinking with his boat. He held his breath until his lungs burned. He later related that he did not think he was going to make it. Finally, though, he found himself, gagging, on the surface.

The six passengers were holding onto a line to stay together. They were floating amid flotsam from the boat such as coolers and plastic containers bobbing around them in frigid 48 degree water two miles from shore with giant waves crashing over them every few seconds. The captain was nearby but, as hard as he tried, he could not swim through the crashing waves to rejoin the group. One particularly large wave hit Jim Emma and stripped away his life jacket. After twenty minutes in the water everyone was beginning to experience serious hypothermia. Emma, exhausted from trying to stay afloat without a life vest, began saying his goodbyes. Just then a big orange helicopter appeared out of the north.

Winds were still blowing at 55 miles an hour when the Coast Guard helicopter from Waukegan airport arrived and began to hover over the shipwreck survivors. Rescue Swimmer Chris Bemis jumped into the water and started the process of getting the people into a Stokes basket so that they could be lifted into the copter. Five persons had been lifted aboard the aircraft by the time a Coast Guard boat from Kenosha arrived. The last two were taken aboard the boat. All were taken to the hospital and treated for hypothermia. One spent the night. All survived.

The passengers and crew of Fin Seeker survived because of the heroic efforts of both her captain and the US Coast Guard. Captain Lee made sure that all his passengers put on life jackets and that they got away from the sinking boat. He put himself in peril by going back down into the cabin to give the Coast Guard their location. The Coast Guard got to the site of the sinking with remarkable speed. They maneuvered their helicopter in very hazardous weather conditions. The rescue swimmer braved those same conditions. Without their prompt, expert response the outcome of this incident would not have been as positive.

Three days after the sinking of Fin Seeker, I called the Kenosha Coast Guard station and asked for the location of the sinking. I knew they had the position that Jason Lee radioed to them. I wasn’t sure that they would give me the information, but I figured I didn’t have anything to loose by asking. If they did not give me the information I could always file a Freedom of Information Act request for it. In fact, they gave me the latitude, longitude coordinates with no hassle at all. We were off to dive on Fin Seeker, the newest wreck in the area.

Dave and I took Enterprise and headed out to the position that the Coast Guard gave us and dropped a marker buoy. Then we started to search in a pattern generally north and slightly east of that position, figuring that that would be the direction that the boat would have drifted as she sank. Surprisingly, we hit a blip on our depth sounder after only about 20 minutes of searching. We dropped a marker on the target and prepared to dive.

I handled the boat while Dave made the first dive. I maneuvered over the wreck and signaled Dave to go. He stepped off the boat and quickly made his descent. I moved off to one side and waited for him to come back and report what he found. We were almost certain we had located the wreck we were after, but you can never be sure until you actually dive down and see it for yourself. Dave was down for over 30 minutes. He was either checking out the wreck or he was swimming around trying to find it. I couldn’t tell from his bubbles. Finally, he surfaced.

I shouted, “Did we find it?”

He called back, “We’ve got it.”

I picked Dave up and, as he got out of his dive gear, he described what he had found, “It’s Fin Seeker alright. She’s upright on the bottom. The cabin top is stripped off and lying to one side. There’s fishing gear and fishing line all over the place, a real tangled up mess.”

I made the next dive carrying with me a long line to attach to the wreck as a mooring line. I jumped in the water as Dave guided the boat over the wreck and then descended, following the marker buoy line to the bottom. The weight at the end of the line was resting on the bottom in 60 feet of water just about 15 feet off the stern of the wreck. Dave was right, there were fishing poles and lines all over the place. I swam over to the wreck and moved a couple of poles out of the way so I could get at the cleat on the port quarter. I tied the mooring line I was carrying to the cleat. And then swam a circle around the boat to get an overall look at her. As I swam around the starboard side I came across a fish lying on the bottom, still attached to a line by a hook in its mouth. I wondered if this was the fish caught by Gail Burke just before that fatal storm struck. I then went into the cabin. I found that I could just get into the cabin and the head but I could not squeeze into the forward bunk room with my tanks on. Time was getting short, so I grabbed a couple of loose items and made my way back out and to the surface, stopping a few times to cut myself free of the tangle of fishing line.

On the boat I found that I had retrieved a personal computer and a cooler. The beer in the cooler was just the right temperature but the sides of the cans had been slightly crushed by the water pressure at depth. I picked one up and gave it a slight shake. The sides popped back out and the can resumed its normal shape.

Over the next couple of weeks we cleaned up the fishing line and salvaged much of the loose items in the wrecked boat. We invited Jason Lee out with us and brought up several items that he was interested in getting back, including some personal items of his passengers, a bible that had personal meaning to him and several computer disks. Some of the fishing equipment was still serviceable. We were able to return a few items that were still useable to Captain Lee. We kept the beer as our salvage fee. The boat, unfortunately, was a total loss and he told us that his insurance company was making a quick settlement with him.

Jason Lee is now back with his wife in the Philippines. He has given up the charter business altogether. We are left with a new shipwreck to dive on and an incredible story of trials and heroism.

Sources: Daily Herald, Chicago Tribune, Jason Lee