NEW CASTLE, N.H. (AP) – There are conflicting reports about whether life jackets were on board a sailboat that drifted for days before a 20-year-old man on board was rescued, telling authorities that his father had fallen overboard.
Asher Woods was rescued from the 41-foot sailboat on Oct. 20, five days after he and his father, Stephen Woods, 55, set out from Rockland, Maine. The Stratham men had been sailing the boat from its warm-weather home to its winter quarters 120 miles away in Rye. They had been expected to arrive by Oct. 17.
Asher Woods told the Coast Guard that his father went overboard without a life jacket on Oct. 15, the day they set out.
The father’s law partner, Thomas Gage, had said last week that when the two looked for the life jackets, they did not find any on the boat. Gage said the family suspected the jackets had been stolen.
But the Coast Guard said there were life jackets on board, and video of the rescue from the boat that came to Asher Woods’ help shows him wearing a life jacket on the sailboat.
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