A discovery off the coast of Spain managed to surprise two New Jersey residents earlier this week.
In 2008, Scott Douglas and his brother-in-law went fishing off Nantucket on Douglas’ 26-foot boat, but when the weather turned ugly the men would begin a story for the ages.
Douglas’ boat, the Queen Bee, might as well have been a rubber duck floating in the ocean the way is was tossed about in the storm. Unable to stay aboard, the two men were forced to swim for their lives to shore. After the two-hour miracle swim, the men were lucky to be alive.
That August day was the last time either men saw the Queen Bee and Douglas informed his insurance company of the incident, ultimately reaching a settlement.
Jump to January 2012, three and a half years later.
An ocean away, about 20 miles off the coast of Spain, the Spanish Coast Guard would find the Queen Bee rusted, covered in barnacles, but still intact.
The Guard called their U.S. counterparts and Douglas, who technically has no ownership of the boat now, was informed that the boat he’d lost more than three years ago had somehow traveled across the Atlantic ocean for a little vacation in Spain.
The Queen Bee now belongs to the Spanish government, but that doesn’t mean Douglas walks away with something.
He now has not only a heroic tale of survival, but one about a boat that couldn’t be sunk.
As for how the boat made it all the way to Spain, experts say it likely got taken in by the trans-Atlantic drift, headed north up the New England Coast, to Canada, then on to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and across the northern Atlantic. From there is headed past Greenland to Ireland and finally headed down the European coast until the day it was spotted near Spain.
