The crew of the Gloucester dragger Midnight Sun — Capt. Tom Testaverde, his son Tom Jr., his brother Joe Testaverde, and Bobby Gross — suffered a month of anxiety after losing their net during a fishing trip at Wilkinson’s Basin 60 miles northeast of Gloucester on April 6.
The power of prayer came into play in the happy outcome weeks later.
At 2 a.m. that day, "the wind gusted to 40 mph out of the east; the tide was running. The ocean was sloppy," recalled Capt. Testaverde.
His family’s pretty blue and white 86-foot stern trawler was then towing over $20,000 worth of fishing gear — a set of steel trawl doors, cables and a rock hopper net with a 98-foot sweep — on the basin’s muddy, sandy and rocky bottoms over 500 feet down for groundfish at about 3 knots.