For want of an anchor, almost unhappy ending

VA drama hits home
May 21, 2014
Lafourche tourism chief retires
May 21, 2014
VA drama hits home
May 21, 2014
Lafourche tourism chief retires
May 21, 2014

For all mariners there comes a moment of truth, the realization that the sea is so big and the boat is so small, and for Clyde Tucker that moment came last week.


Extra life jackets wrapped around his legs to ward off the chill as day turned to night, Clyde watched and waited on board his crippled boat for rescuers, the winds and current steering him closer to the open Gulf of Mexico. Increasingly rough waters breached the transom as Clyde hoped rescuers might beat out Poseidon’s greedy fingers.

It’s a scenario that Coast Guard personnel, water patrol deputies and other rescuers don’t like to see, but which they know occurs all too often.

That Clyde is an experienced boatman, and that his ordeal occurred just prior to National Safe Boating Week, when officials encourage mariners to check their safety lists, added cruel irony of a perilous and potentially deadly situation.


“As the peak of boating season is upon us we cannot stress boating safety enough,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class John Schroeder, in a statement promoting boating safety for the campaign. “We want boaters to enjoy themselves, but to do it in a safe manner.”

Clyde thought that was precisely what he was doing when he gunned the 90 horsepower outboard on his 17-foot bay boat and began his Cocodrie run.

It was to be a simple, carefree cruise. Clyde wore a life jacket, the inflatable kind, heeding warnings born of deadly statistics. 


There were a few key things that Clyde did not have with him, however. The little hooker anchor remained ashore. So did the portable VHF radio, which comes in handy when a cellphone is lost, damaged or out of signal range.

“I didn’t plan on going out in any open water,” Clyde explained. 

Last Wednesday was breezy but pleasant, he recalled. A front was moving in from the west but it didn’t cause Clyde much concern. 


At first.

“I was just enjoying being out there, looking at the birds,” the 61-year-old Baton Rouge real estate appraiser said, recounting how he traveled the waters of Bayou Petit Caillou, then Bayou Sale, all safely within Terrebonne Parish’s inshore waters.

Then, as day drew to a close and the sun began its downward creep, something happened. 


The motor stopped. 

“I was in a shallow area and there was mud,” said Clyde, who was able to get the motor going again, and determined the problem was a clog in the water pump. “I stopped, tilted the motor up and started idling around where the water would be deeper to clear the mud. I started toward Sea Breeze Pass, which is deeper. I was inside of (the pass) and then the motor cut.”

This time, there was no re-starting it. 


“The wind was picking up and was stronger,” said Clyde, who tried using his trolling motor to reach a bank within sight, but to no avail. “It would not go anywhere against the wind and the waves. I started drifting.”

Wind and waves conspired to bring Clyde and his vessel anywhere but land, and around 8 p.m. he used his cellphone to reach 911.

A Terrebonne operator answered, and after that dispatched the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office Water Patrol to the Sea Breeze area for a stranded boater.


Lt. Mike Ledet and Deputy DJ Authement took the call, and launched from LUMCON in Cocodrie.

“It was already getting rough out there,” Ledet said. “We started looking. All we knew was that we had someone out there, but we thought he was staying in one place.”

The operator did not know that Clyde wasn’t stationary but adrift in building seas that carried him beyond the safety of Sea Breeze.


Blue roof lights on the patrol boat cut through the darkness as Ledet threaded it through canals and cuts. Sometimes, he said, people call for help and then luck comes, they end up heading home but don’t call to cancel.

He had a sense this wasn’t the case, however, and the two lawmen pressed the search.

The deputies contacted the New Orleans Coast Guard station at 10:25 p.m., and an MH-65 helicopter with three crewmen lifted off for an aerial search.


“The winds were blowing in excess of 20 knots,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer Dustin Mangram, an operations specialist who was present when the call came in. The darkness and the weather combined made the situation treacherous, he knew.

Out on the water, Clyde desperately pounded his cellphone keys, to tell authorities that his position was and had been changing, but he was out of signal range. The phone battery was wearing down, and Clyde gave up trying to reach out.

“I started taking on water,” said Clyde, who was powerless to direct his wind-driven vessel. “The wind was causing the bow to go down and the waves were hitting the transom. That was causing the spray to go up and get me soaking wet.”


The seas were at about a foot, no more than two, when Clyde first started drifting, but as the night wore on they were closer to six.

“I was cold, wet and scared and didn’t think about eating,” Clyde said. “What I knew was going to happen is the boat would be swamped, and eventually would sink. I was wearing my inflatable life jacket, the kind with a cord, I always wear that when I am by myself.”

He donned another life jacket atop it to remain warm and also wrapped two others around his legs.


The bilge pumps were keeping up with the water but they wouldn’t last forever, Clyde knew, and wit the sea state worsening, they bore no guarantee.

Clyde wasn’t paying attention to time; the hours before seemed to have stood still. But records indicate it was around 2 a.m. when the helicopter, on its final pass because fuel would soon run out, was close by.

“I could see the lights and could see that it was flying a grid formation,” said Clyde, who had no flares. Had he brought the VHF radio, contact with the searchers would have been possible. 


But it was not to be.

Later estimates were that Clyde’s craft was drifting at around 0.8 mph, and the direction was due south, with little or nothing to keep him from the hungry, open Gulf of Mexico.

Then, the helicopter drew closer, and hovered above. The crewmen sent down a VHF radio, and the first thing they asked was if Clyde was hurt. He told them no that he was just cold.


A determination was made to keep the chopper close by and notify the Water Patrol.

Ledet and Authement sped to the scene.

“It becomes very risky in that kind of wind if you try to lift someone,” Petty Officer Mangram said.


It was after 2:45 a.m. when the patrol boat reached Clyde.

“It was some of the worst I have been in,” Ledet said of the sea and wind conditions, unusual for May. “It was like the water on ‘The Deadliest Catch.’”

With the help of Clyde, the boat was tied on to the patrol vessel.


With the help of the officers, Clyde made a prayerful leap onto the patrol boat. 

“DJ told me that when they got close enough to see, my boat looked like a little cork bobbing in the water,” Clyde said.

Clyde and his boat were taken to LUMCON, and he was driven home to his camp. 


The first thing he did was take a hot shower.

Clyde was willing to discuss his rescue out of gratitude for the rescuers, and in hopes that his own situation might be a help to other boaters.

“I had lost it,” Clyde said. “I had lost my respect for the water.”


That’s something he doesn’t think he will do again.

Since the ordeal, the anchor has been placed back onto the boat where it belongs. The VHF radio will come on every trip, even if it’s just a little bayou jaunt.

The VHF could have aided had it been on board.


While boaters may feel safe with just a cellphone, the Coast Guard recommends marine-band radios set to channel 16 for boaters in distress, and is pushing that message as part of National Safe Boating Week.

“Radios are better than cellphones because their signals can assist in locating people in distress,” said Ed Huntsman, boating safety program manager for the 8th Coast Guard District, which includes the New Orleans area. “Though a cellphone is better than no communication device at all, cellphones tend to have gaps in coverage while on the water, plus limited battery life. Many VHF radios are now water resistant and some are even waterproof.”

Clyde said he potentially owes his life to the rescuers who tried, despite obstacles, to find him and didn’t give up. 


“Mike Ledet, DJ Authement and the crew on that Coast Guard helicopter, they are all heroes,” Clyde said.

Ledet shrugged off the compliment, although he was grateful for the appreciation.

“This is why we stress these things all the time, how important it is to have all your equipment,” said Lt. Ledet. “We’re just happy that we were able to get him home safe.”


Terrebonne Water Patrol Lt. Mike Ledet displays two items that are essential for boaters, an anchor and a VHF radio. Lack of both had consequences for a Baton Rouge boater Ledet rescued last week.

JAMES LOISELLE