Crew finds keel of Aggie boat off Gulf Coast - Bryan/College Station Eagle

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Published Friday, June 20, 2008 6:10 AM

Crew finds keel of Aggie boat off Gulf Coast

By HOLLY HUFFMAN
Eagle Staff Writer

A Galveston-based salvage crew has located the keel of the Cynthia Woods, an Aggie sailboat that capsized two weeks ago, killing one crew member and stranding five others at sea.

The team spotted what appeared to be the keel -- a flat blade at the bottom of the boat that keeps it upright -- on Wednesday, according to Texas A&M System officials. Underwater acoustic equipment was used Thursday to direct a diver to its location.

It was found in about 113 feet of water about 32 miles off the coast of Freeport in the Gulf of Mexico, A&M System officials said.

Authorities have said it appears the Cynthia Woods began to take on water after its keel was ripped off about 10 hours into a 610-mile race.

Five men -- four students from A&M's College Station and Galveston campuses and one safety officer -- spent 26 hours in the water before they were rescued by the Coast Guard early June 8. The group was competing in a regatta from Galveston to Veracruz, Mexico, representing the A&M Galveston Offshore Sailing Team.

A sixth crewman, safety officer Roger Stone, died after reportedly pushing several fellow crew members to safety. His body was found on the afternoon of June 8.

A&M System spokesman Frank Griffis said it likely would be Friday before the keel was pulled from the water. The Coast Guard was en route to the site Thursday afternoon to oversee the retrieval. Meanwhile, the salvage crew was videotaping the keel in case it was damaged during removal, Griffis said.

Griffis said it was too early to say what investigators might learn from the discovery of the keel. Thursday afternoon, A&M officials had not had a chance to speak with the team from T&T Salvage because they still were at sea.

The Cynthia Woods will be shrink-wrapped and moved from Freeport to Galveston for further investigation, Griffis said, adding that the keel and video footage would also be taken to Galveston.

"We're still gathering paperwork and documents -- maintenance records, repair work, all those kind of things on the boat itself. We're gathering information from sailing team members, the captain, everybody involved," Griffis said, noting that interviews also would be conducted with the boat manufacturer and anyone who conducted repairs on the vessel.

"We're in the process of hiring experts ourselves -- maritime engineers, architects, boat designers. We'll have them examine everything we have and start putting all the pieces together."

• Holly Huffman's e-mail address is holly.huffman@theeagle.com.

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Posted by: On: 6/30/2008

Comment Title: Boat Story is Fishy
Regarding the ongoing investigation into the sinking of the "Cynthia Woods," the "Cape Fear 38-foot" sailboat that sunk in the Gulf of Mexico during a regatta on June 6, it was reported yesterday (29 June 2008) in an Associated Press syndicated column that the investigation is now centering on the damage and subsequent repair work that was done to the boat's keel after it ran aground on two separate incidents in July 2006 and again in March 2007. I have owned two separate sailboats on Galveston Bay which were between 32 and 38 feet in length, so I'm not totally unfamiliar with ocean-going sailboats of this size. There are several things about all this that give me reason to sit up and question what is going on. First of all, a couple of weeks ago, one of the local Bryan-College Station (home of Texas A&M University) television stations showed a photo of the damage to the keel of the Cynthia Woods while it was out of the water. Clearly, this was a photo taken after the March 2007 incident, but long before the recent sinking. In the Sunday, 29 June 2008, front page story, a color photo showed the rear of the hull including the rudder, but suspiciously excluded the damaged keel. This is the damaged keel that caused the sinking. Why would it be purposely excluded from the photo? What good is the photo without the damaged keel in it? The second item that caught my eye was the statement that "the only known damage to the sailboat from the July 2006 grounding was the loss of a cover from for a navigation light on the bow, records show." Huh? Someone please explain to me how you damage a bow light by grounding a boat? How did the tip of the bow, where the navigation lights are, come in contact with the ocean bottom??? And how do you damage a navigation light on top of the bow without damaging the heck out of the keel??? What is really going on here? Lastly, Texas A&M University System deputy chancellor and general counsel, Jay Kimbrough, is quoted in the article as saying, "Vessels run aground, and vessels get repairs. Just because it ran aground does not give me an 'a-ha' moment. That's why cars have bumpers. The question is to what extent it was damaged, how was it repaired and was it fully repaired." As for the final sentence of this statement, I have to ask, "Do they teach you how to state the obvious when you go to law school?" If so, then Mr. Kimbrough gets an A-plus. But what really shocked me was his statement, "That's why cars have bumpers." He is stating that boats have keels for the same reason that cars have bumpers. He is obviously not schooled in maritime law or naval architecture. Keels do not have the same purpose or function as bumpers. Not anywhere close. But my question is "Why is the University being so quick to dismiss the damage to the keel during the two groundings in 2006 and 2007? I would have a very close look at the damage done during the grounding that only damaged a "navigation light."