Divers spent Monday scouring Cape Breton’s Ingonish Harbour in search of a 14-year-old boy presumed drowned after a boat capsized on the weekend.
Gregory Hibbs was with four other teens, aged 14 to 18, aboard the wooden rowboat when it started taking on water early Saturday morning.
Four of the teens made it safely to shore, about 300 metres away, but Hibbs has not been seen nor heard from since.
"It's an old wooden boat probably made more for less than the number of people that were in it," said RCMP Const. Scott MacRae.
"Once it took some water on it overturned and all of them ended up going in the water and unfortunately one did not make it."
Police say alcohol was a factor in the incident and that the teens weren’t wearing life-jackets. RCMP Const. Brad Anderson says high winds and the boat’s poor condition may have also contributed to the vessel’s capsizing.
“Very dark night, nobody knew they were out, nobody knew where they were going,” says Anderson. “There were no life-jackets or personal floatation devices in the boat with them. No lighting on a boat that small, the weather was poor, they’re not familiar with the area.”
A search was launched early Saturday morning that included police, search and rescue personnel and members of the community.
By Saturday evening the rescue operation became a recovery effort as divers scoured the murky waters of Ingonish Harbour in the hopes of retrieving Hibbs’ body.
“Given the time delay, it’s changed really from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” says Anderson.
A cormorant helicopter, Coast Guard Auxiliary and dozens of volunteers returned to the site Sunday.
On Monday, a Department of Fisheries scanned the bottom of the harbour with side-scan sonar, but they have yet to spot the boat or Hibbs’ body.
“The sonar is particularly effective in these conditions so they’re very confident they’ll be able to find the boat and/or body, and their experience tells them that when they find the boat, they’re very likely to find the body,” says Anderson.
Police believe the teens had come from Glace Bay to visit a friend who recently moved to the area.
Ingonish resident Rollie MacKinnon, who owns some cottages nearby, says he used to do the same thing when he was a boy.
“If we wanted to go around the harbour we took somebody’s dory or somebody’s little dinghy or whatever we could get and we tried to return it, and if we didn’t, who knew that we took it?”
MacKinnon says he met some of the teens and their families through friends.
“He was like any other kid. They liked to go out on a limb sometimes. He was a good kid. I didn’t know him that well, but what I did know of him, he was a very nice kid.”
More than 25 local fishermen have also been helping in the search as the community comes to grips with the tragedy.
“I think everybody feels the same way, that it’s just very, very sad that this has happened and everybody feels terrible for this young boy’s family,” says former area resident Della Roode.
“Everybody’s just really upset and, you know, down in the dumps about it,” says fisherman Sheldon Whitty. “But, I mean, there’s not much you can do.”
Anderson says a decision on whether to end the search will be made each day, but dive team members have said they don’t plan on ending the search until the boy’s body has been recovered.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Dan MacIntosh, Ryan MacDonald and The Canadian Press
