Sonar Sweeps Being Used to Comb the Depths
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
As efforts to find the body of Annapolis publisher Philip Merrill stretch into a fourth day, investigators are re-creating his final hours in hopes of speeding a search that combines sonar technology with a sailor's sense of the Chesapeake Bay.
From the moment Merrill set out from his Severn River home Saturday, alone on the Merrilly on a windy afternoon, he subjected himself to risks that for a man alone -- even in a 41-foot, high-performance sailboat -- were substantial, sailors and meteorologists say.
Merrill entered the bay as winds reached 15 to 20 knots, or 17 to 23 miles an hour, strong enough to create three-foot whitecaps and, on land, cause small trees to sway, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist Dennis Feltgen.
But according to authorities, the Merrilly was big enough to weather such conditions and built to make single-handed sailing easier. And for its captain, who had been on boats since he was 7, the stiff breeze was ideal. Merrill's family believes he headed east, the wind at his back, on a favorite cruise to Kent Island, where he would typically turn around and return, a round trip of 18 miles.
But the wind on the way over may have made the Merrilly susceptible to what sailors call an "accidental jibe," in which a slight shift in the wind catches the main sail of the boat, causing the boom, which runs along the bottom of that sail, to swing abruptly across the boat and hit anyone in its way.
"The wind in that sail is just so powerful. . . . It's coming at you at such a great speed. And the bigger the boat, the bigger the boom coming at you," said Ruth Wood, president of the BoatUS Foundation for Boating Safety and Clean Water, based in Alexandria.
That, the theory goes, could have knocked Merrill overboard, leaving him unable to get back aboard.
"When you're alone, you might be able to [swim] back to the boat, but getting back onto the boat, especially one like Mr. Merrill's, which was very large . . . getting back on deck is impossible without steps or something to pull your body back up," Wood said. "And when the water's so cold, you lose your strength."
Authorities believe that Merrill was not wearing a life jacket, which in safety experts' view was a key error. "Not only could it save your life, it's added hypothermia protection," Wood said.
In 1988, Richard Conlon, a Capitol Hill aide, was sailing on the bay when a sail became entangled. Trying to work it free, Conlon was hit by the boom and fell overboard. Even though his wife was on the boat with him when he fell, it took two days to find his body.
Ellison Burton, 77, the former commodore of the Parklawn Sailing Association on the West River in Anne Arundel County, was with his brother on a 37-foot boat on the Severn in 1981 when "the boom swung over, hit me in the left temple, threw me . . . about five feet out," he said. "I was bleeding from a gash on my head, and the boat is moving away from me. I could see it was futile to try to catch up." He was rescued by a family passing by.
The 40-year sailing veteran does not sail alone. "For me, it wouldn't be prudent," he said.
On a boat the Merrilly's size, in the conditions that prevailed Saturday, "I'd want at least two other people on board who knew what they were doing," Burton said.
The fact that Merrill's boat was found at full sail, typical for traveling with the wind at one's back, sailors said, could indicate that an accident occurred on his way to Kent Island -- and then the craft drifted south with wind and currents to the Calvert County spot where it was found. On the return trip, Wood said, most sailors would have trimmed the sails to give them more control when facing the wind.
Either way, the search has focused on a swath of bay along the Kent Island route. But despite a specialized sonar search boat, five patrol boats and a helicopter, the search for a solitary drowned man in 100 square miles of bay can be excruciatingly slow.
A torpedo-shaped sonar "fish" is mounted beneath the sonar boat. Scanning the bottom, which ranges from 20 to 90 feet below, the sonar can "see" 100 feet on each side of the boat.
Following a pattern that some rescue teams call "mowing the lawn," the boat has been tracing Merrill's presumed route, overlapping 50 feet on each pass, "to make sure we don't miss anything," said Maryland Natural Resources Police Superintendent Mark S. Chaney.
The sonar has picked up tires and other debris but no sign of Merrill. On Monday, police managed to comb only three miles of the bay, less than half the distance they'd hoped for.
At that rate, covering the bottom could take weeks. But nature often speeds the search.
Initially, a submerged body sinks. But after a time, decomposition creates an internal buoyancy that propels a body to the surface. How quickly that happens depends upon such varied factors as stomach contents, medication a person might be taking, clothing and weight. It also depends in large degree on water temperature: The warmer the water, the faster a body will rise.
However, "there are simply so many variables, it is very difficult to predict what might happen," said Lee Meadows Jantz, a professor at the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center.
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