Two men were plucked from the chilly waters of the Chesapeake Bay and a third was missing yesterday after their recreational fishing boat capsized and sank in rough seas.
State Department of Natural Resources officials said the 22-foot Viking pleasure craft Mickie Marie began taking on water rapidly amid four-foot swells and sank about 8 a.m. near the mouth of the West River in southern Anne Arundel County.
The captain, Claude Vernon Norman, 55, was pulled from the water about 3 1/2 hours later by the captain of another pleasure boat. One of Mr. Norman's passengers, James Gerald McAllister, 38, of Columbia, was picked up 20 minutes later by the Coast Guard.
Mr. Norman, who lives in Riva near Annapolis, told police that his boat sank so rapidly that his other passenger, Wayne Eugene May, 42, of Arlington, Va., didn't have time to put on a life jacket.
Mr. Norman radioed a distress call to the Coast Guard when he discovered his boat was sinking, but it went under before he could give its location, police said.
Mr. Norman told the boat captain who saved him that Mr. May, who was not wearing a life jacket, slipped beneath the 55-degree waters and never resurfaced.
The rescued men had been able to put on their life jackets. Both were taken to Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis and were released after treatment for hypothermia.
The search for their companion was suspended at 5 p.m., and was to resume this morning.
Douglas Gregory, 51, a Shady Side sport fisherman, was heading home about 11:30 a.m. from a morning of rockfishing in his 24-foot boat Chesapeake Classic when he "saw something in the water and realized it was a man," he said.
Mr. Norman, wearing a life jacket and a quilted jumpsuit, was floating nearly a mile off Horseshoe Point, south of the West River.
"I was kind of shocked to see a man floating in the water and nothing else around," Mr. Gregory said. "I kind of had to look twice."
Mr. Gregory said Mr. Norman appeared weak after spending the morning in the chilly water. Mr. Norman told him the twin-outboard Mickie Marie took on water rapidly before it capsized. The boat was not found.
Mr. Gregory struggled to get Mr. Norman, who weighs almost 200 pounds and whose clothes were drenched, into his craft. Mr. Gregory made a sling out of anchor line, got Mr. Norman's knee into it, and finally rolled him onto the boat.
Mr. Norman took off his wet outer clothing and wrapped himself in Mr. Gregory's dry jumpsuit, his hands too cold to put it on.
"He was really scared and deservedly so," Mr. Gregory said. "That water was cold."
Mr. Norman told Mr. Gregory that one of the Mickie Marie's passengers, who had no life jacket, had disappeared beneath the waves.
The rescuer radioed the Coast Guard to report the accident and to get an ambulance ready on shore.
A 36-foot sportfishing boat was in the vicinity, and Mr. Gregory stood by for five minutes until it arrived. Then he headed for shore. He heard on the radio that the other survivor, Mr. McAllister, had been found.
Lt. j.g. Rob Keith, a Coast Guard spokesman, said a 19-foot rigid-hull inflatable boat from the Annapolis Coast Guard station was on the scene almost immediately after Mr. Gregory's radio call and picked up Mr. McAllister within 20 minutes.
Mr. McAllister was transferred to the Afishionado, a pleasure craft owned and operated by Vince Fort of Arlington, and then to a 41-foot Coast Guard utility boat. He received first aid while being taken to a marina in Shady Side.
A state police helicopter joined the Coast Guard vessels, a Coast Guard helicopter from Cape May, N.J., rescue boats from the Maryland Natural Resources Police and pleasure boaters in an afternoon search for Mr. May.
They found nothing.
"We're still pursuing it as if the individual is still alive, and that's what we have to do," Lieutenant Keith said.
The search took place near the Snug Harbor and Cedarhurst communities in the Shady Side area. Residents watched from the shore as helicopters circled overhead.
"It's amazing they survived that long in that cold water," said Linda Cook, whose family runs the Parrish Creek Marina in Shady Side. "They must have been in pretty good shape."