Lafourche Booking Log – Sept. 5
September 6, 2017
Irvin Naquin
September 7, 2017
As a squall’s winds howled and hungry waves lapped all around, John Trosclair Jr. paddled and prayed in the darkness, hunched in the box he had used to ice down his shrimp.
The sharp eyes of a shrimper on a passing boat and help from the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Water Patrol ensured a safe return for the 55-year-old Dulac fisherman, who said that despite hours in the grip of Hurricane Harvey’s remnants, he never lost faith. His survival, and the generous help he received, is already inspiring others on local bayous, who say it affirms the best of what they know about local spirit.
“I paddled and I prayed,” John said, while recalling his ordeal.
It all started late Tuesday night when John launched his 19-foot Carolina skiff with its towering skimmer frames from the Four Point Launch. He knew the water would be rough. But passage of tropical squalls often bodes well for shrimpers, who will set out in rough seas, under the belief that the bad weather stirs up the bottom, and with it the shrimp.
“It wasn’t blowing that hard went I left,” he said. The hurricane was in Texas. Things could not have gotten very bad. Or so he thought. “I was shrimping in the area I usually work in and then the wind started picking up and I was going to leave when it picked up.”
TWENTY-FIVE YARDS
John wasn’t the only local shrimper braving the blows that night.
Miles away, Tracey Trahan and his 19-year-old son Austin were shrimping in their 55-foot trawler the Mr. Anthony Pookie Trahan, outside the closed Dulac floodgates.
“It was rough,” Austin Trahan said. “The shrimp were alright, decent. They weren’t big but they weren’t small.”
The Trahans felt secure despite the state of the seas. They knew the boat’s fisherman namesake – Austin’s grandfather and Tracey’s father – would keep them safe. Inside the floodgates, John Trosclair Jr. coped with wind-driven seas in the waters of Moncleuse Bay. The winds whipped up and pushed at his skimmer frames.
“I was gonna leave when it picked up,” John said. “I cranked up my frames and then when the wind blew hard they were like sails, and the wind blew me onto the bank.”
John stayed put as rain bands passed, more intense each time, and when it seemed like a break had come he pushed the skiff off into the channel, eager to steer it home. The rains
came through harder, stinging John’s face as he fought to keep the skiff on course. And then the wind did its worst, grabbing the skiff and flipping it over, dumping John’s belongings and him along with it.
“The wind was blowing the water in my boat,” John said. “I got my winch going and tried to bring in my frame and that was it, I went over. I was in the water and I got my stuff out of there. I went 25 yards to the shore and I pulled the shrimp box with me.”
Some food, a 9mm pistol and a shovel were within close enough reach for salvage. John’s cell phone was gone, consigned to Neptune.
“LIKE A HORROR MOVIE”
After struggling to the bank, John curled up in the shrimp box, dawn still hours away. He managed some fitful sleep. Upon awakening he tried to figure his next move, and thought he heard some boats. John fired shots to attract their attention but nobody seems to have noticed.
“Then I thought I would try to go where there could be boats,” said John, who squeezed into the shrimp-box and used it like a boat, abandoning his skiff and its crippled frames.
Using his shovel as an oar John struggled against the chop, finding an area where boats might pass. He managed to push the shrimp-box onto the marsh grass, then climbed inside where, exhausted, he curled up and slept. The rising sun, obscured by thick clouds, managed to throw a ghostly gray light.
While John slept on the banks of the Pirogue Canal, Tracey Trahan and Austin Trahan were in-bound, able to head back because the floodgates were open. But conditions were still bad.
“It sounded like a horror movie,” Tracey said. “The wind was blowing so hard through the netting we couldn’t pull it in, it was like flying a kite.”
The choppy water was the color of chocolate milk, Austin said, and even in his family’s big boat the ride was rough.
For the Trahans, the gamble paid off. Their hold was full with nearly 4,000 pounds of shrimp harvested over two days of hurricane effort.
As Tracey turned their vessel onto the Pirogue Canal, Austin stood at he stern, picking bycatch from shrimp.
“I had seen the white box in the grass,” Austin said. “But I didn’t think nothing of it.”
Tracey saw it too, and then saw something else. Bounding onto his rear deck, Tracey exclaimed “there’s a man in that box,” then went back to the wheel and eased his throttle back.
“IT WAS VERY ROUGH”
It was a little before noon when the Trosclairs helped the soaked fellow fisherman on board their vessel. He told the his tale and they were amazed.
Tracey knew that a lot of people might have thought John foolish to head out in such angry seas in such a small boat. But as a fisherman he understood the call of the bays, the chance that the family could eat that much better even if that meant some risk.
Tracey called his cousin, Herb Fitch, who is a Terrebonne Parish deputy. Fitch notified the Water Patrol; Sgt. Jimmy Verret and Deputy Chris Guise sped to the scene in their special rescue boat, a former Coast Guard vessel.
“Even in that big boat it was very rough with some of those waves,” Verret said. “It’s what we do. We’re happy to be there to help.”
When Guise and Verret reached the Trahan vessel swells of three feet or more made the boats rise and fall, but somehow they managed to get John onto their vessel where two medics from the Dularge Fire Department were waiting.
The medics, Bryan Hebert and Bryson Liner, said John seemed to check out fine. The officers carried him back to shore, where he was reunited with loved ones.
Tracey and Austin, meanwhile, headed to the location where John’s boat had wrecked.
“We tried to flip his boat back over but we were unsuccessful,” Tracey said. “So we dragged it upside down a mile inside the canal to a safe place where we could come back to it when the winds would subside.”
“A SMART CAJUN”
The Trahans stayed out on the water and shrimped some more, then headed to their Dulac dock. The next morning they were at the place where they had left John’s boat,.
“We thought we would do a good community service and flip it over and get it back home to my dock here,” Tracey said. “We have an extended boom forklift that telescopes out. His boat was a severe loss, everything was crushed. There was a lot of damage.”
Tracey has set up a fundraising campaign to help John, and last week had amassed $400.
“I am so glad we were put in his path because he could have perished very easily,” Tracey Trahan said. “Being a smart Cajun, he was brilliant to jump inside his icebox. He floated nearly two miles away from where his vessel capsized and then he slept in it. He was brave. He went out in this weather with that little 19-foot Carolina skiff because he knew he had to make a living and should be proud.”
“I paddled & I prayed,”
John Trosclair Jr. paddled, prayed and had an experience he will never forget during the high waves of Hurricane Harvey. He was trapped in a shrimp box before being rescued by sheriff’s officers.
