Pell Bridge Near Newport

Hope your Monday is going well. If not, you are still probably having a better time than one sailing couple had in Narragansett Bay last Friday and Saturday. A husband and wife were sailing their 38-foot sailboat Alegria from Newport, RI to East Greenwich on Friday. At some point on Friday, the wife fell overboard. The husband was apparently unaware she was missing.

How, where, and why this happened is unclear. The Providence Journal quotes 2nd Class Petty Officer Sam Van Lent from U.S. Coast Guard Station Castle Hill, saying, “The story’s a little cloudy.”

The husband told the Coast Guard that they had run into the Pell Bridge, not far from Newport sometime on Friday afternoon. After checking for damage, they continued their sail and subsequently the husband fell asleep. He apparently woke up when the sailboat ran aground on Conimicut Point, around 14 nautical miles north of the Pell Bridge and north of Prudence Island. How the boat sailed that distance without running into other islands is unclear. Was the wife steering? Was the boat on autopilot linked to a chart plotter route? The media reports do not give any indication.

The husband was apparently able to get off Conimicut Point and head toward his slip in East Greenwich, RI. When he arrived around 2AM Saturday morning, he went below to check on his wife and realized that she was missing. He called 911 and reported a missing person, possibly in the water. The Narragansett Bay Marine Task Force was mobilized to search for the missing woman. Rescue personnel from Portsmouth, East Providence, Middletown, Newport, East Greenwich and North Kingstown aided the Coast Guard and Bristol Fire joined in the rescue effort and searched from Rose Island near Newport Harbor to Conimicut Point in Warwick.

At about 4AM, a passing boat heard a woman yelling for help from Potter’s Cove on Prudence Island. The boater dialed 9/11. Apparently, after falling off the sailboat, the woman swam to a boat moored in the cove. She was rescued by a Bristol Police boat and taken to Bristol where she was treated for mild hypothermia. 

Petty Officer Van Lent commented, “It’s still an ongoing investigation. No one yet knows how she went overboard, where she fell off or why. She was lucky to be found.”