What took so long? Coast Guard didn’t send help to Patriot for nearly 21/2 hours

By Richard Gaines, Staff Writer Gloucester Daily Times

Coast Guard Station Gloucester, on its own, was not allowed early Saturday to launch a search for a missing fishing boat.

Instead, the Coast Guard command in Boston decided not to even begin searching for the Patriot until more than two hours after Station Gloucester was informed that its two-man crew had taken it fishing, and that communication between the boat’s co-owners — the captain and his pregnant wife, who was onshore in Gloucester — had ominously ceased, except for the remote radio signal from a fire alarm.

Full Story at the Gloucester Daily Times