After shrimp boat sinking, family business gets a lift: S.C. community replaces uninsured trawler.(GULF/SOUTH ATLANTIC).

Less than a month after his shrimp boat, Anna Grace, sank in the channel off Shem Creek, S.C., Warren "Bubba" Rector and his wife, Pam, stood among supporters at a fund-raiser organized by fellow shrimper Wayne Magwood and others.

To see such a turnout on their behalf was very moving, says Pam.

"That's what got me," she says. "We had 600-700 people come."

Anna Grace, a 68-foot Desco trawler, sank Sept. 5 after the autopilot malfunctioned, letting the vessel stray off course and strike a channel buoy.

Lance Rector, the couple's son and skipper of the vessel, had gone below to check on a bilge pump. It was just one of those things.

Warren says Lance took it hard. "He still hasn't really gotten over it."

But Lance and his dad, who rushed to help the stricken vessel, got everyone safely off Anna Grace before she rolled over and went down.

And thanks to a month of hard work and good neighbors in the South Carolina shrimping community, the Rectors are back in business. They purchased another veteran 68-foot Desco--in need of a lot of work--out of Hilton Head.

They weren't able to salvage much off the uninsured Anna Grace.

"The only thing we got off of it was the mast, boom and riggers," Warren says.

The Rectors had just stored a new set of four $4,000 nets in the fish hold, but swift currents and close quarters in the freezer hold made it too dangerous for divers.

"I told them not to worry about it," Warren says. "Nets aren't worth somebody's life."

Source Citation
Childers, Hoyt. "After shrimp boat sinking, family business gets a lift: S.C. community replaces uninsured trawler." National Fisherman 90.8 (2009): 23. Culinary Arts Collection. Web. 4 Dec. 2009. .

Gale Document Number:A212106058

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