Father of lost skipper tells of tragic capsizing

Hello Fishies

Tonight I share with you an Associated Press article regarding the F/V Ash, which I posted about a while back. I want you to take a break from the “who is the hottest, biggest, best” or whatever. Instead, I would like you to focus on what it must have been like for the men aboard the boat and the witnesses as this tragedy unfolded.

You see my friends and readers, fishermen are real people just like you. They live, love, laugh and cry, have families, hopes, joys and fears. I did not know the men who were lost, this time.

Father of lost skipper tells of tragic capsizing

Associated Press

PORT ORFORD, Ore. -- The Ash, a 43-foot fishing vessel, had never been out crabbing before Saturday, when Captain Robert Ashdown, three crewmen and 70 crab pots headed toward the sea. As the boat crossed the Rogue River bar, the U.S. Coast Guard said, a huge wave struck the bow, followed seconds later by a wave that rushed the stern. The crew sent a distress message about 3:40 p.m., but the vessel, previously a research boat, capsized and sank.

The Coast Guard searched for the men Saturday evening and again Sunday. The search was called off late that afternoon.

The crewmen were identified Monday as Louis Lobo, 39, of Las Vegas; Mark Wagner, 40, of Port Orford; and Joshua Northcutt, 30, also of Port Orford. Wagner was the father of a 6-month-old girl; Northcutt had a 4-week-old daughter.

The captain's father, Michael Ashdown of Port Orford, told The Oregonian newspaper that he was cleaning his salmon gear Saturday when a friend phoned from the jetty at Gold Beach.

"He said, 'Hey the guys are going out, just letting you know,"' Michael Ashdown said. "He told me they were making it just fine." Then the first big wave came. "He said, 'Oh, they got over that one. Another big one's coming,' and then, 'You better get down here, it rolled over.' You can imagine how I felt. "

Ashdown, 68, a commercial fisherman of 32 years and father of three commercial fishermen, rushed to Gold Beach. When he arrived a half hour later, the sea had scattered the boat and its crew.

The Coast Guard said conditions were dangerous the day the Ash sank, with swells at the bar topping 18 to 22 feet. Ashdown, however, said the conditions were not that unusual for fishermen.

"It was rough, but not terribly rough." he said, adding that the crew would have voted whether to go out.

"If anyone didn't want to go they wouldn't," he said. "We had discussed that. If I could have been here, I could have stopped them. In hindsight it is easy to say that."

Ashdown said his 44-year-old son coached high school basketball, volunteered with the fire department and led the local Boy Scout troop. He was the father of two sons and a daughter.

Northcutt was a longtime family friend who fished with the Ashdowns for about eight years, said Michael Ashdown.

Wagner was described as a talkative man who doted on his new daughter, his first child. "Mark was very into his family," said fiance Jamie Justice. "He loved his little daughter. She was his pride and joy."

Justice said Lobo was new to crabbing. "This was his first time out," she said. "He was just learning."

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