Boat Did Not Have Enough Crew

Investigators Search For Clues After Tour Boat Tragedy Kills 20

(CBS/AP)  "I never thought I was going to lose friends and not be able to say goodbye to them," Jeane Siler, a 76-year-old survivor, said Monday.

As the boat began its slow slide to the bottom, pleasure boaters out enjoying the late spurt of summer weather formed a makeshift rescue armada. Gisella Root and her husband, who own a local motel, rushed to the scene after they saw the boat bobbing upside down in the water from their dock.

As her husband dove in clothed, Root threw life preservers and seat cushions to the survivors and pulled them into the boat one by one. Making the rescue harder was a blooming diesel fuel slick from the overturned boat that made survivors slippery to the grip.

"I'm assuring them `You're OK, I'm not going to let go of you' Everybody was just drenched with fuel, so they were slick," Root said.

Root managed to cram eight people aboard her boat, including Siler. A local jewelry store owner, Mounir Rahal, and his family saved six more.

The dead, brought in on a separate dock, were wrapped in white sheets and laid out on the green lawn nearby the survivors.

"One after another, they started bringing them in," said retired businessman John Doody.

Kelly said the captain, Richard Paris, refused to get off the rescue boat when he was ferried in, insisting: "No, I'm the captain. I'm going back out."

They let him go.

Investigators had not tested Paris, who is an experienced boat captain, for drug or alcohol use because there was no evidence of intoxication, the sheriff said. He said there didn't appear to be any criminal conduct. No one answered a phone call to Paris' home Monday.

Virgil Chambers, executive director of the National Safe Boating Council, an organization for recreational boaters, said he was not familiar with the specifics of the Ethan Allen but said investigators would probably examine how weight was distributed within the boat.

"If all the people were on one side, maybe to look at something, and if the operator were to take the boat over a wave at a particular angle, it could cause the boat to roll," Chambers said.

Chambers said he also expected investigators to look into whether there were any modifications to the covered, glass-enclosed craft, such as the addition of a canopy structure, that might have made the boat less stable.

New York state boating regulations require a life jacket for every person on a boat, but people do not have to wear them.