Quick thinking and fast action by Good Samaritans saved seven people aboard a boat sinking in unusually rough waters off Robins Island yesterday.
Riverhead cardiologist Dr. Ricardo Monserrate and his friend Reece Padavan were aboard the doctor’s boat Reelaxation with their wives and young children yesterday, enjoying a Sunday afternoon cruise on the Peconic Bay. When the winds picked up and the waters grew choppy, they decided to return to the dock at Larry’s Lighthouse Marina in Aquebogue, where Monserrate keeps his boat. It was about a quarter past two.
“The water was suddenly very, very rough, ” Monserrate said. “When the wind is against the tide — when the wind is going one way and the tide the other — the race can get very rough,” he said. “Suddenly it seemed the winds were about 25 knots.”
Monserrate and Padavan, perched high on the flybridge of Monserrate’s 41-foot Luhrs, noticed a boat in the distance, positioned in the south race, west of Robins Island. The craft didn’t appear to be moving and the men soon realized it might be in distress. As they drew closer, they saw the occupants of the smaller craft waving their arms — and then a red flag.
“By the time we got close, their boat was bacscially 70 percent under water,” Monserrate said. “They were trying to get life jackets on.” There were four adults — two women and two men — and three teens — two boys and a girl‚ on the sinking vessel.
“I thought we’d be towing them in, but realized we’d have to get them on board — fast,” the doctor said.
In an interview today, Monserrate recalled the strong smell of gasoline as he maneuvered his boat around debris that was floating in the water — cushions and other items that entered the water as the boat went under.
As Monserrate maneuvered the boat, Padavan sprang into action, jumping to the main deck from the flybridge, untying the Reelaxation’s inflatable dinghy and tossing it overboard.
“They were maybe 30 or 45 feet away,” Padavan said. “Rick pulled up in a way to allow us to drift toward them. It was perfect.”
The occupants of the sinking boat jumped into the choppy waters. The two boys and one of the women grabbed onto the wave-tossed dinghy.
“It was like the ocean,” Padavan said. “The waves were crashing all around us.”
Padavan, standing on the swim platform at the rear of the Reelaxation, plucked the distressed boaters out of the water one by one.
“It was unbelievable. I don’t know if it was adrenaline or he’s much stronger than I thought he was,” Monserrate said of his friend.
The rough waters were slamming the big fishing boat.
“At one point we had taken on two feet of water in the stern,” Padavan said. “Our wives started to panic, thinking, I guess, that we might sink too.”
All seven occupants of the sinking were safely brought on board. They were all very shook up, Padavan said. One of the boys had banged his head, opening a small cut, he said. But it wasn’t bleeding and didn’t appear serious.
“It all happened so fast,” Padavan said.
Monserrate had radioed the Coast Guard. By the time he pulled away from the area, the smaller boat was almost completely submerged.
Monserrate captained his boat back to shore, where Riverhead Police, Jamesport Fire Department and a Mattituck ambulance were waiting at the marina.
It was chaotic, Padavan said. They didn’t even get the names of the people they rescued.
“They were European — Finnish or Swedish,” he said. “They kept saying, ‘Thank you so much, you saved our lives out there.'”
Padavan, 49, director of insurance for Financial Resources Group/LPL Financial in Lake Success, said he and Monserrate just did what came naturally and what needed to be done.
“Would these people have perished?” Padavan wondered aloud today. “I don’t know, but I can tell you this: There weren’t many boats out on the water. About 15 minutes later, we heard another boat on the Coast Guard channel report debris in the water. Would they have lasted in that water for another 15 minutes? I don’t know. It was at least a mile to shore in each direction. To swim through four, five foot chop… I don’t know,” he said.
“This was just — you just react in a situation like that,” he said.
“What happened was the kind of thing you read about or see on TV, and here it was happening to us.”
