DOVER, N.H. (AP) – Stephen Woods’ son was able to pull him up to their sailboat by rope after he was swept overboard in a storm, but he couldn’t get him aboard, even after putting a ladder over the stern, a Coast Guard investigation shows.

As waves tossed the 55-year-old lawyer from side to side, 20-year-old Asher Woods tried unsuccessfully to change course and then to start the 41-foot Naobi’s diesel engine, Foster’s Daily Democrat reported Friday. When those attempts failed, he released the lifeboat in hopes his father could grab onto it, but his father disappeared, the newspaper reported based on an all-but-final report it obtained Thursday.

Father and son, who lived in Stratham, were sailing the boat from Rockland, Maine, to Rye last Oct. 15 to have it hauled out for the winter. By nighttime, however, they were in heavy rain, 30 mph winds and seas of nearly five feet, the son told investigators.

He said his father had crawled out onto the bowsprit as the two were securing the sails when the boat swung broadside and his father went overboard. He said neither man was wearing a life jacket.

The paper said it got the report from officials at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Thursday even though local Coast Guard officials were supposed to comment on it before it was made public. Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin Benson in Boston said no substantive changes would be made before the official release.

According to the report, Stephen Woods had difficulty arranging to get the boat hauled out of the water in Rye, but got an appointment for Oct. 17. Woods and his wife Deborah planned to sail the boat south the weekend of Oct. 7. When that plan fell through, father and son decided to do the job starting Saturday, Oct. 15.

They had trouble starting the engine on their lifeboat to get out to their mooring, but set sail about midday. A boatyard customer whom the Coast Guard did not identify said he was surprised because the forecast was for bad weather. The man described himself as a “blue-water sailor” well-equipped for sailing far out at sea.

When it began raining and the wind picked up, Stephen Woods decided to spend the night in Boothbay Harbor rather than sail through the night, the son said.

But he said his father couldn’t start the diesel engine. He said his father speculated that rough weather had stirred up sediment and clogged the fuel injectors. He said the engine had begun sputtering in Rockland and once died.

With the engine not working, Stephen Woods decided to sail to sea to avoid the rocky coastline. He began looking “real stressed out,” which the son said made him anxious, too.

He said he tried to sleep below, periodically spelling his father at the helm until his father called him about 9:30 p.m. to help get the sails down. He said a sail-furling mechanism jammed and his father crawled onto the bowsprit to try to fix it. When the sail broke loose, trailing a rope, his father told him to steer the bow into the wind.

As he tried to do so, “the boat rocked and the boom swung a little and Stephen Woods went overboard backwards,” the report said.

He said his father, who probably was wearing “a couple layers of jackets and fleece under the rain jacket,” held onto the rope but had trouble staying above the waves.

The son said he hauled in the rope, deployed the ladder and took the other steps until his father disappeared after about five minutes.

He tried calling for help on his father’s cell phone and the boat’s marine radio until its battery died, but to no avail. According to a Global Positioning System device, it was about 10 p.m. and he was 13.3 miles east of Boothbay Harbor.

When a lobster boat found the Naobi off Cape Cod five days later, its sails were tattered and its hatch was broken and unsecured. The fuel tank was empty and there was a significant amount of water in the bilge, according to the report.

Deborah Woods described her husband as a “good sailor” who, though self-taught, was very enthusiastic. Her son liked to sail when he was younger but was not proficient enough to sail alone, she said.

The son said he had never sailed on the Naobi before and hadn’t been sailing at all in two years.

He told investigators he read while the boat drifted and spent most of his time below trying to conserve food and water. His mother told investigators he was depressed and even contemplated suicide, but had become determined to survive by the time he was rescued.

When the lobster boat found him, the crew told him he could come aboard immediately or wait 15 or 20 minutes for the Coast Guard to arrive. His response is his only direct quotation in the 29-page report: “Get me the (expletive deleted) off this boat.”

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