December 20th, 2016 — Christopher Hutchinson said he had no idea the storm would grow so strong so fast.
It was November 2014, and Hutchinson, 28, had set out in his 45-foot lobster boat, a fiberglass craft called No Limits.
He wanted to check on 15 traps in Eleven Mile Ridge, a popular lobstering area off the coast of Maine. Two crewmen manned the boat with him — Tomas Hammond, 26, and Tyler Sawyer, 15.
They arrived at dawn on a Saturday morning and began pulling up traps, but the weather worsened.
Hutchinson told the Portland Press Herald that he checked the conditions around 10 a.m. and found the wind blowing at a barely manageable 22 knots.
The men called off the expedition and began to head for shore — but it was too late.
“We got hit by one large wave, and that pushed us into another. The windows to the wheelhouse blew out, and we began taking on water quickly,” Hutchinson told the Bangor Daily News.
Court documents say a nearby weather buoy reported winds of 40 knots, and waves 14 feet high.
The large lobster boat flipped. Hammond and Sawyer were nowhere to be found.
“I’m not 100 percent sure what happened next, but the next thing I recall is being in the wheelhouse and the boat is upside down in the water,” Hutchinson told the newspaper.