Northeaster Takes One Hellacious Toll

What had been a productive fishing season took a violent, albeit temporary, turn for local trap fishermen when winds and waves generated by last week's surprise northeast storm tore their traps to pieces. The four-day blow pulled boats from their moorings and caused serious erosion on bay as well as ocean beaches.

"Annihilated," was how Mickey Miller, an East Hampton bayman, described what the storm had done to his pound trap near Old House Landing on Gardiner's Bay. He said wind and waves had pushed seaweed into the trap's netting, the added weight pulling the trap's stakes from the bottom. "I can rebuild, but it's hard to find trees to cut for stakes with all the foliage."

"It was as bad as it can get," said Brad Loewen, a veteran pound-trap fisherman and president of the East Hampton Town Baymen's Association. Mr. Loewen's three traps, located in Gardiner's Bay between Cedar Point Park and Hedges Bank, were pulled apart. "The first trap lost 23 stakes, the second, 20." He was putting two back together this week, but the westernmost trap was a "total loss."

The bayman said that at Hedges Bank, "there's nothing between us and Rhode Island but the fort," the remains of old Fort Michie, known as The Ruins, on the northern end of Gardiner's Island. "It was like the ocean. Northeast winds. It had to be blowing 40 - ungodly gusts. It was a particularly hard storm and blew for four days, relentless."

Bob Stalker, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Brookhaven, said the unusual weather was the result of an upper-level disturbance stalled between the Rocky Mountains and a blocking weather pattern offshore. The stalled front allowed more than one low-pressure system moving up from the south of Long Island to combine with full-moon tides to "pile water up along the coast."

Richard Hendrickson, the National Weather Service's local statistician, put the gusts at over 40 miles per hour out of the northeast early on Wednesday, May 25, a day after the storm began. Between Tuesday and Thursday of last week, when the big low-pressure system faded away, one and a half inches of rain fell, filling an already swollen Georgica Pond. "To have one in late May with two days of severity and high tides and beach erosion is unusual, but it's no record-breaker," Mr. Hendrickson said.

But it was a trap and back-breaker, according to Mr. Loewen. "It's not that I can't get them back together, but I'm 56 years old with a sore back. I've been through hurricanes, and this was worse." Two of his traps should be back fishing by the end of the week, he said.

His and Mickey Miller's were not the only traps to suffer. Kevin Miller's trap at Fresh Pond was lost, and Jens Lester and Doug Rigby were said to have lost stakes as well.

Most traps had been fishing since early May, catching "mostly squid, the best I've seen in 15 years," a fact Mr. Loewen attributed to the colder-than-normal water temperatures, which might have kept bluefish from their usual squid attack. Porgies, bluefish, and weakfish had begun to show up when the northeaster struck.

The storm caused a 48-foot Endeavor sailboat to come ashore on Havens Beach last week, according to the Sag Harbor Village Police Department. Flying High, owned by Dawn Cziraki of Sag Harbor, came to rest near the Havens Park playground.

Bruce Tait, a yacht broker and member of the village's harbor committee, said the storm was rare for late May. "It was more like a fall storm."

Last Thursday, on the second day of the storm, two more sailboats, Swans of 61 and 42 feet, were pushed over the top of the Sag Harbor breakwater. No one was aboard the boats at the time. They had been moored outside the protection of the breakwater, about 1,600 to 2,000 feet from the Breakwater Yacht Club, according to Ed Barry, a village harbormaster.

David Whelan of D.J. Whelan Corporation, a marine contractor, hauled the Swans away from the breakwater on Saturday, and was expected to remove Flying High from the beach today at high tide. He said the job will require a crane barge, two tug boats, and an excavator. "It's a delicate process. It's like moving a beached whale - you can't just pull on its fin and put it back in the water."

Flying High escaped without serious damage, but the boats on the breakwater weren't as lucky. The smaller vessel "was holed," the rudder of the larger one was damaged, and their rigging became entangled, Mr. Whelan said. "The priority was to remove the boats on the breakwater because they were in peril." Village police and the harbormaster did not release the names of the boats' owners.

Mr. Barry pointed out that Sag Harbor was located between two masses of land, Shelter Island and Cedar Point, which tended to funnel northeast winds toward the village. The harbormasters' wind gauge on top of the Sag Harbor Village Marine Center on Bay Street showed 52-mile-per-hour winds on May 25.

Mr. Barry said he suspected that gusts reached 15 or 20 miles per hour higher than that because of the funneling effect. Full-moon tides added to boaters' difficulties in Sag Harbor. "In fairness to everybody involved, it was an unexpected and an unpredicted gale that wasn't announced to be so strong," the harbormaster said.

"I can't remember a nor'easter in May," said Larry Penny, the director of natural resources for East Hampton Town. He said the town's more vulnerable shorelines took a hit, including those at Soundview Drive on Montauk's Block Island Sound side, Mulford Lane just west of Lazy Point on Napeague, and sections of ocean beach. High tide caused "slumping" of Montauk's bluffs, and scoured Ditch Plain down to the glacial till in places, the resources director said.

Beaches recently replenished with sand were stripped again at Gerard Drive in Springs, and piping plover nests and fences to protect them were washed away by the storm.

Mr. Penny said the endangered shore birds would rebuild their nests, but the loss meant that beachgoers would have to stay away from them that much longer.