Jubillee sunk in 300ft

[Frank]

I just learned of this today......   (my home for 3 winters)

A tragedy!!   He had a 50ton Captains license and was a "natural"...an adventurer

Very Sad!!   

From the Miami paper:

Boat captain Noah Cullen set sail by himself Monday morning from his mother?s house in Key Largo, but something went terribly wrong during his return to shore.

His 28-foot sailboat, Jubilee, was spotted drifting near Dixie Shoal, in water about 300 feet deep and about seven nautical miles northeast of Molasses Reef, at 2:30 p.m. Nobody was aboard, and a lightning storm had just passed through the area.

The boater took a picture of the vessel, which clearly was taking on water and looked like it was about to sink, and alerted authorities.

Since then, the Coast Guard has conducted at least nine searches by air and sea, covering 1,100 nautical square miles, said Petty Officer Jon-Paul Rios of Coast Guard District 7. The Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department?s Emergency Water Team, the Monroe County Sheriff?s Office and individuals with boats and aircraft also searched. As of Tuesday evening, there was no sighting of Cullen, 24, or his boat.

?I?m hoping that he just swam and swam through the night,? his mother, Tanya Cleary, said Tuesday afternoon. ?He might just be so exhausted that he is sleeping somewhere in the mangroves. That?s the best-case scenario I?m thinking about right now.?

Rob Bleser, captain of the Emergency Water Team, said his team searched all day, from Port Largo to Ocean Reef in North Key Largo. ?All we can do now is cross our fingers at this point and hope he is on dry land, making his way back,? Bleser said.

After Cullen started his trip at his mother?s house off mile marker 100, he and his boat with a Bahamian flag were spotted at noon Monday at French Reef by a boat captain with Quiessence Dive Center.

?He had just gotten out of the water after free diving and was witnessed setting sail toward shore,? Bleser said. ?The captain watching him was impressed with his abilities.?

At that point Cullen was under full sail, and Bleser said his boat captain watched him go as far as White Bank Dry Docks, which is about 3 miles from shore. About an hour after Cullen left French Reef, the storm rolled in.


?There was lots of lightning, heavy rain and winds up to 25 knots,? said Stephen Chesser, a meteorologist at the National Weather Station in Key West.

At first, when Cleary heard her son was free diving by himself, she feared he might have suffered a shallow water blackout, when a free diver loses consciousness close to the surface.

?But when I saw the report that he got back on the boat and headed toward Dry Rocks, we think he was done free diving for the day and was headed in,? Cleary said.

When the sailboat was seen drifting, its anchor was up, another sign that it was a boating accident and not a free-diving mishap.

The sailboat?s front mast was reefed, indicating that Cullen ran into heavy winds.


The sailboat was seen drifting several miles northeast from the Dry Rocks, which likely means it was going in that direction due to the currents or storm winds.

Cullen recently had painted the boat?s hull and had taken it for a sail with no problems on Saturday. ?I don?t think the boat was defective in any way,? Cleary said.

Cullen, a 2008 graduate of Coral Shores High School in the Upper Keys, is an experienced sailor. His mother said he began taking lessons at just 5 years old, and was a natural.

?He is a water boy,? she said.

Cullen also is a dive master and had acquired his 50-ton captain?s license.

He has sailed solo to the Bahamas.

?I worried much more about him doing that than this,? Cleary said. ?He assured me when he went to the Bahamas he was tethered to his boat and had a spot locator. I think this time he was so close to home he was comfortable in his environment and was not tethered. I don?t think he had his spot locator on.?

If Cullen was knocked off his boat in the storm, Cleary takes some comfort knowing that her son is an adventurer. ?My friend always said if we were on Survivor or some other disaster show, they?d want Noah with us.?

Cullen has read survival books, knew the waters off Key Largo ?like the back of his hand,? can navigate by the stars, is a strong swimmer and has camped out in the Everglades, his mother said.

His adventuresome spirit also led to him getting a pilot?s license at just 17.

?I think he soloed after only nine hours in the air,? Cleary said. ?He taught himself mostly on a simulator.?

Two years ago, Cullen?s father died unexpectedly. So he started helping out his mother at the family business, Dream Bay Resorts in Key Largo.

?He recently was going to go back to college,? she said. ?He had enrolled at FKCC [Florida Keys Community College] for marine biology.?

Cleary is holding out hope that her son will be found soon.

?It really was agony to go through last night, thinking of him floating in the water in the dark,? she said. ?But I know if anybody can survive this, Noah can.?

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/incoming/article1978539.html#storylink=cpy

[Frank]

From the Miami paper 7 weeks later (Jubilee sunk Aug 4th/14)




Several miles off the coast of Key Largo, in dark and cold water more than 300 feet below the surface, two volunteer technical divers made the dangerous descent to a sunken sailboat in search of its missing captain, 24-year-old Noah Cullen.

The divers, Joe Citelli and Steve Muslin, found what is believed to be human remains inside the cabin and retrieved a small sample to be analyzed. While positive identification through DNA could take months, Monroe County Sheriff?s Office investigator Vince Weiner said, ?There is no indication it is anybody but him.?

Cullen?s mother, Tanya Cleary, said Monday she believes it is the remains of her son. He has been missing since Aug. 4, when a boater spotted his 28-foot sailboat sinking after a storm, and Cleary said she is beginning the grieving process.

?We wanted closure, but this is also extremely painful,? Cleary said. ?We?ve had such a strange seven weeks going through this. We even had a person come to us saying Noah was in the witness protection program, which is crazy.?




The last tweet posted on Cullen?s Twitter account @bathyphile came on the morning of his disappearance. It said: ?Noah Cullen is dropping out for a bit #sailing #bathyphile #offshore.?

There also were tips that Cullen, a 2008 graduate of Coral Shores High School, may be in the Bahamas.

?We had a lot of reasons to hope, only to be let down,? Cleary said. ?So it?s bittersweet to find his body in the boat, although we probably always have known he was in there.?

The tragedy began on a nice Monday morning, when Cullen decided to take his sailboat to the reef to go free diving. He had tried to get friends to go with him but ended up going by himself.

He set sail from his mother?s house, near mile marker 100 of the Overseas Highway, and a few hours later was spotted at noon at French Reef by a boat captain with Quiesence Dive Center.

Cullen had just finished free diving and began sailing toward shore. ?The captain watching him was impressed with his [sailing] abilities,? Rob Bleser, captain of the Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department?s Water Emergency Team, said at the time.

That would be the last time Cullen was seen alive. About an hour after he was seen leaving French Reef, a storm rolled in with lightning, heavy rains and winds of up to 25 knots.

After the storm passed, at about 2:30 p.m., the boater spotted the sinking sailboat near Dixie Shoal, about seven nautical miles northwest of Molasses Reef. No signs of life on board were evident. The boater took a photograph, alerted authorities and left the area.

A massive air and sea search was launched. The U.S. Coast Guard and local and state agencies, as well as a small army of volunteers, covered about 5,000 nautical square miles over several days. While the official search was called off, the Upper Keys dive community did not give up.

?Noah was a member of the dive community, his stepfather co-owns one of the local dive shops and we take care of our own,? Bleser said.


The first step was finding the sailboat. A sonar scan conducted near the last known sighting of Cullen?s boat showed what appeared to be a boat just 80 yards away, but this proved not to be the case.

Bleser thought that the boat likely sank before the Coast Guard began its aerial search. Starting with the last known point, he calculated a model based on the direction, flow and speed of the current.

?I figured the maximum distance it could have traveled was 9,500 feet,? he said.

On the third attempt using this model, sonar from a private boat detected what appeared to be a sailboat about 5,800 feet from the last sighting of the sailboat, Bleser said.

Next came positively identifying the boat as the Jubilee. For this mission, a remotely operated underwater vehicle was borrowed from Lad Akins, head of the Key Largo-based Reef Environmental Education Foundation.

At the end of August, Bleser and his stepson sent the ROV down to the wreck and made the confirmation.

The final step was getting tech divers who were willing to make the risky dive. That led to Citelli and Muslin, who have about 50 years of combined experience.

Said Citelli: ?When I heard the kid?s age, I said to myself, ?This could be my son or my grandson. I know how I would feel in the position of those parents.? Steve and I thought it was important to get it done.?

Citelli, whose impressive diving r?sum? includes a 430-foot dive 140 miles offshore to identify the shipwreck Joseph M. Cudahy, said he also didn?t want to have less-experienced tech divers push their limits and have it turn into a ?double disaster.?

Citelli and Muslin both used rebreathers, a closed circuit system in which exhaled gases are scrubbed of carbon dioxide and replenished with fresh oxygen so the mixture can be breathed again. Mixed gases are used because air becomes toxic below 218 feet, Citelli said.

Each diver also had two ?bailout bottles? with different mixes for different depths. ?The cardinal rule is always to have an alternate source,? Cittelli said. ?The deeper you go, the greater the risk. Once you get to the 300-foot range, there is very little margin for error.?

There were safety divers on the boat, as well as a hyperbaric physician.

The two men made the descent and spent 18 minutes on the bottom. They were expecting water temperatures in the 80s, but they encountered 64 degrees.

They surveyed the boat, taking video and collecting the tissue sample before making the ascent, which included about an hour of decompression stops along the way for total dive times of just over 80 minutes.

"It was a very dangerous operation for them and we're just extremely grateful," Cleary said.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will use the video to help in its investigation of the boat fatality, and the Monroe County Sheriff?s Office will use it for its missing persons case.

The tissue sample was brought to the medical examiner?s office in Monroe County to ensure it was human remains before it will be transported to another agency for DNA testing. But the medical examiner will not be able to determine cause of death.

?And I doubt we?ll ever know the true reason why the boat sank,? said Bobby Dube, spokesman for FWC. ?It probably was from the storm. There are many theories. Some think it was probably struck by lightning.?

That theory could also mean that Cullen was either killed instantly or rendered unconscious and not able to escape from the boat before it sank.

Due to the dangerous depth, there are no plans to return to the boat. His family is at peace knowing Cullen?s final resting spot is in a place he loved.

?I?d just like Noah to be remembered as someone who loved the water and was a passionate defender of the unique environment of the Keys

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/florida-keys/article2208154.html#storylink=cpy

[Frank]

It seems he was very experienced for his age and had excellent abilities. The boat was well found and the fact he was not on deck when Jubilee was 1st spotted have lead to the theory that he was either killed or knocked out with a lightning strike and the boat possibly holed by it as well. (knotmeter or depthsounder blow out?)
Extremely sad as he seemed to be such a "full of life" adventurer!!

[s/v Faith]

That is terrible Frank, I am so sorry to hear it.

Very hard to do much about lightning, terrible....

Gotta say, what a great thing those rescue divers did to go and provide the family some closure.

[Frank]

I have to say it is very sad and feels eerie to see a boat I sailed for 3 winters down 300 ft acting as a coffin for a seemingly wonderful young man. If you read it...he certainly had a zest for life!!   Diver, captain and pilot....and young!   Very sad!

[Jim_ME]

I have to say it is very sad and feels eerie to see a boat I sailed for 3 winters...

Now I understand what you mean...that you sailed this boat...

Yes, very sad...especially tragic for such a young person, who should have a long life ahead.

Agree that it was an honorable effort to find the sunken boat and confirm his fate and bring some closure to his family and friends.

[CapnK]

Wow, I remember reading of that last year, just after it happened, but there were no pics of the boat nor mention of the boat name, so I had no idea that that was Jubilee.

The shot of it sitting there on the bottom, main reefed/furled, heeled a bit, but looking like a decoration in a super-sized aquarium - just surreal.

I hope for the parents/family/friends sake that they get closure after the remains are tested.

[Frank]

It is very surreal !! And eerie !

I crossed the stream twice on her, he did as well. It is oddly emotional for me.....not for the loss of the boat, but it does go to show how even with experience, there is always risk. Hard to explain ....but it certainly feels weird seeing her there thinking of all the places we went.

I feel so bad for the young man. He truly seemed to be not only knowledgeable, but had that true zest for life and adventure. A true loss....