Missing on the Bay

I’ve had a visual on about five fireboats tonight between Poplar Island and the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power plant. They’ve been out for about three hours and are spread about five miles apart, sort of in the middle of the Bay. I recognized one as Prince Frederick’s Fire/Rescue, and heard some communication with North Beach VFD on the Marine Band, but haven’t quite figured out just yet what is going on. There haven’t been any Coast Guard notices I’ve hear yet. Might be a search and rescue. Anyone tracking? Turns out a sailor was overdue. They found his 41 foot sailboat drifting. The Post then explained all the helicopters and planes going by outside Philip Merrill, the firebrand newspaper publisher and diplomat known for his devotion to journalism and the environment, remained missing yesterday after his sailboat was found drifting alone Saturday in strong winds in the Chesapeake Bay Merrill is the owner of the Annapolis Capitol, and was the head of the Export-Import Bank for a few years. He’s a pretty big name in the DC media community and the press has been covering the story pretty heavily. During the day, a large C-130 from the Coast Guard flew past the house on a number of occasions. I managed to grab the camcorder and captured a bit of it flying overhead which I posted on Youtube.com Unfortunately, I recorded the video in HDTV and in converting it to the web it shrank to 4×3 (which is why the C-130 looks pretty fat). I’ll play with that today.]]>