Screengrab: Edward Arellano
When the dawn patrol crowd descended down the cliff at Santa Cruz’s Pleasure Point Wednesday morning, a 48-foot fishing boat was already anchored just outside its lineup. The boat’s captain, Richard McCann, had dropped anchor much earlier in the morning, and the plan was to resume fishing for squid after catching some sleep. At 7:30 am though, McCann’s engineer, Edward Arellano, was woken up by smoke filling the cabin.
Reports out of Santa Cruz haven’t pinpointed the exact time the fire started on the fishing boat, but Arellano told local news outlets he believed the boat’s generator had malfunctioned and caused the insulation to catch fire. Once he was woken up by the smoke, his first act was to wake the 82-year-old captain and then get to work putting out the fire. He started by bucketing water down the smokestacks while another boater pulled up to help and to call the harbormaster.
Arellano fought the fire like that for at least 30 to 45 minutes before any more help was able to arrive, according to Lookout Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz Harbor Patrol, the Coast Guard, and the Central Fire District of Santa Cruz County all responded to the scene with Monterey Fire taking lead on putting out the blaze. McCann and Arellano were taken to the Capitola Wharf and one first responder on the scene was eventually taken to the hospital for smoke exposure, but Harbormaster Blake Anderson told the local outlet that he “appeared to be ok” by the time he was taken away.
In the end, the boat eventually sank before the fire could be fully put out and it could be towed back to harbor.
Sadly, the incident may have sent the boat’s captain to an early retirement. McCann has been working on fishing boats for 60 years and has been set to retire soon.
“I’ve been running commercial fishing boats since I was in my early 20s,” McCann told Lookout Santa Cruz. “(I was) just getting ready to retire. It’s not a good way to go out.”
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