Snow Drift (I)

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada states that "Shortly after 0400 Pacific Daylight Time on 09 May 2011, a fire broke out in the engine room of the small fishing vessel Neptune II. After their attempt to fight the fire was unsuccessful, the 2 crew members abandoned the vessel into their dive tender and issued a distress call. Neptune II burned to the waterline and subsequently sank east of the Broken Islands in Johnstone Strait, British Columbia. There were no injuries." "The Neptune II was a small wooden fishing vessel of closed construction. The galley and master’s cabin were located on the main deck with the wheelhouse located forward on a raised half deck. The hull below the main deck was subdivided by 4 transverse bulkheads that enclosed (from forward) the crew accommodation, the engine room, the fish hold and the lazarette. The vessel was propelled by a diesel engine with high-pressure, single-walled fuel lines. The engine was coupled to a reverse/reduction gearbox driving a single-fixed propeller. The vessel had a single-plate centreline rudder. The hydraulics on deck could be powered either by the main engine or by the auxiliary engine located in the engine room. Two alternators (one 12–volt and the other 24–volt), driven by either the main or the auxiliary engine, charged a bank of batteries; an inverter then converted the DC voltage from the batteries into 110 volts AC for use on board the vessel. The vessel was fitted with 2 engine-driven fire and bilge pumps, one powered by the main engine and the other by the auxiliary engine, which could be turned on from the engine room only by activating the power take-off and opening the sea suction. Although the Neptune II was a reg"istered fishing vessel (seiner), its primary function at the time of the occurrence was to serve as a live-aboard vessel2 for the crew, which used it in conjunction with the12-metre, aluminium dive tender Deep Six, which had once been used as a herring skiff. The vessels were used together in the geoduck (clam) fishery.