3 years after US accident, boat washes up in Spain

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/25/10233719-3-years-after-us-accident-boat-washes-up-in-spain

NEW YORK -- As he swam toward the coast of Nantucket, Mass. in August 2008, Scott Douglas, 58, watched his yellow fishing boat disappear, carried away by the swelling surf. He thought it would be the last time he'd ever see the Queen Bee.

But yesterday, more than three years after Douglas and his brother-in-law were tossed off the boat by a wave, the U.S. Coast Guard called to say the vessel had washed up on the Spanish coast. It was rusty and covered in barnacles, but intact.

Lt. Joe Klinker, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman, said the most likely scenario is that the boat somehow got across the continental shelf and into the Gulf Stream.

He said it's rare, but not unheard of for an object off the coastline of the United States to drift across the Atlantic to Europe. But a boat? "I've never heard of anything like this," Klinker said.