Six Yeshiva Men Rescued From Fog Off Montauk

By Sabrina C. Mashburn

On Tuesday, August 7, six young men set out on a two-hour excursion around Montauk in a rented, 18-foot bowrider-style boat along with two other groups of men in two other boats. Soon after they disembarked from Uihlein's Marina on Lake Montauk, where they had rented the boat, they became lost in a heavy fog, drifting in the waters until 6 a.m. on Wednesday, when members of the United States Coast Guard, stationed in Montauk, found them.

The boys, who are from Israel and Brooklyn, are in their mid-twenties and had some experience piloting watercraft. According to marina owner Henry Uihlein, the men had left a brief outline of their boating plans with both the marina and Rabbi Leib Baumgarten, the Director of Lubavitch of the Hamptons. Although the boat did have signal flares, it was not equipped with a marine radio. Uihlein has said that he does equip his rental boats with radios, but that the men had given him their cell phone numbers and since cell phones have greater coverage than the radios, he did not give them a marine radio. He was unaware that the men would leave their cell phones in their car before casting off from the dock.

When Uihlein noticed fog rolling in at around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, he sent his staff to go find the three boats that were still out on the water. His staff returned with two of the boats, but could not find the third boat, as it had headed north towards Connecticut. Uihlein then contacted Ed Michaels, the East Hampton Senior Harbormaster, who then contacted the Coast Guard. Rabbi Baumgarten also contacted the Coast Guard at 6:30 p.m.

The Montauk Coast Guard radioed an alert to boaters in the area, then sent out search boats to sweep the waters of eastern Long Island Sound and Block Island Sound. The New London Coast Guard launched a rescue at 11:45 p.m. At 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday, The 87-foot-long Coast Guard Cutter Chinook set out from New London to find the lost boat. However, it was the Montauk Coast Guardsmen who eventually found the 18-foot boat carrying the six young men, who were wearing life vests and appeared to be in good condition.

The young men were taken aboard the 47-foot Coast Guard vessel and motored back to the Montauk Coast Guard Station. Representatives of the Coast Guard have intimated that if the men had been carrying cell phones, they would have been found much sooner, as the fog was so thick and visibility so poor that the Coast Guard search was completely reliant on radar.

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