What Happened to the Destination Crab Boat? The 2017 Sinking

AvatarByEric Dawson Updated Boats & Cruises

The Destination, a 98-foot crab boat out of Seattle, sank in the Bering Sea before dawn on February 11, 2017, near St. George Island. All six men aboard died and none of the bodies were ever recovered. Federal investigators later reconstructed what happened to the Destination crab boat: it sailed from Dutch Harbor overloaded with roughly 200 crab pots, ran into heavy freezing spray, and took on an estimated 339,416 pounds of ice. With a hold hatch left unsecured and an exhausted crew, the vessel rolled over and disappeared in about two minutes. Nobody sent a mayday.

What Happened to the Destination Crab Boat on February 11, 2017

Leaving Dutch Harbor two days earlier into a worsening forecast, the Destination capsized and sank in about two minutes before dawn on February 11, 2017. The Destination pulled out of Dutch Harbor on February 9, 2017, while the National Weather Service was calling for wind gusts near 40 mph along with freezing spray. Captain Jeff Hathaway pointed the boat toward the crab grounds near the Pribilof Islands, roughly 200 miles north of Unalaska.

Two days later the crabber was working close to St. George Island in gale force wind. Spray froze onto every surface it touched: rails, rigging, the stacked pots on deck, the wheelhouse itself. Ice like that does not simply add weight to a boat. It adds weight high up, where it does the most damage to a hull’s ability to right itself after a roll.

The final minutes are preserved in tracking data. Shortly after 6:12 that morning the vessel’s transponder showed it swinging through a nearly complete circle, a track later described as a death spiral. By 6:14 the signal was gone. No one aboard transmitted a distress call, and nothing in the investigation record shows that the radio or the steering had failed beforehand.

Searchers found a debris field over the following hours: buoys, a life ring carrying the boat’s name, an oil sheen on the water. None of the six men were found. Coast Guard aircraft and vessels covered thousands of square miles before the search was suspended, and the bodies of the crew were never recovered.

The Six Men Who Died on the Destination

Six people were aboard when the boat went down, and all six died. Names, ages and roles come from reporting by the Anchorage Daily News, which interviewed families and worked through the investigation record. Ages were not published for every member of the crew.

Name Age Role
Jeff Hathaway 60 Captain
Kai Hamik 29 Crew member
Larry O’Grady 55 Crew member
Darrik Seibold Not reported Crew member
Charles Glen Jones Not reported Crew member
Raymond Vincler Not reported Crew member

Hathaway, at 60, was the most experienced hand aboard and had spent much of his working life in Alaska fisheries. Hamik, at 29, was the youngest crew member named in the reporting. Because nobody survived and no remains were recovered, investigators had to rebuild the final voyage entirely from tracking data, shoreside records, loading documents and the physical evidence that floated free of the wreck.

Loss on this scale had not hit the Bering Sea crab fleet in more than a decade. Reporting at the time of the investigation described it as the deadliest accident in that fleet since 2005, which is part of why two separate federal bodies opened formal inquiries rather than one.

Why the Destination Sank: Six Failures That Stacked Up

No single mistake put the boat on the bottom. Investigators described a chain of conditions, each survivable alone, that together left the vessel with no margin at all. Remove any one link and the Destination very likely comes home.

Factor What the investigations found
Overloading Departed with roughly 200 crab pots heavier than the 1993 specifications; the loaded condition failed to meet minimum federal stability standards
Outdated stability book Stability manual unchanged since 1993 despite modifications, including a bulbous bow fitted in 2012
Ice accumulation An estimated 339,416 pounds of ice from freezing spray, which the crew did not remove
Open hatch The No. 3 hold access hatch left unsecured, allowing rapid downflooding
Crew fatigue An exhausted crew, likely asleep rather than clearing ice, with no time to react once the roll began
Bait placement Bait stowed on top of the pot stack against the vessel’s loading instructions

Overloading and an Outdated Stability Book

The Destination left port carrying roughly 200 crab pots stacked five high on deck. Its stability manual, written in 1993, assumed each pot weighed about 700 pounds. A pot recovered from the boat’s gear weighed 840 pounds. That gap of 140 pounds per pot looks trivial on paper and stops looking trivial once it is multiplied across a full deck load.

Federal rules require a fishing vessel of this class to carry current stability information and to load within it. Coast Guard investigators concluded the boat departed in an overloaded condition and did not meet minimum stability standards in the state it sailed in. Nobody aboard had numbers that matched the vessel as it actually existed in 2017.

The 2012 Bulbous Bow and Its Missing Paperwork

A bulbous bow was fitted to the Destination in 2012. Hull changes of that kind alter displacement and the way a vessel sits and rolls, which is precisely why a stability book is supposed to be recalculated afterward. That recalculation never happened. A new bulwark at the bow added more weight forward, heavier pots had come into service across the fleet, and none of it reached the 1993 document the captain was working from.

Coast Guard investigators put that omission on the owner. David Wilson, the principal owner, failed to give Hathaway accurate information for maintaining the stability of the vessel after the bulbous bow, the new bulwark and the heavier gear, and that failure became the basis for the civil liability the service later recommended.

Freezing Spray and 339,416 Pounds of Ice

During the gale on February 11 the boat accumulated an estimated 339,416 pounds of ice, the figure published in the investigation findings. Close to 170 short tons of it sat on rails, pots and superstructure, most of it well above the waterline. The NTSB summed up the effect by saying freezing spray coated the Destination and made it disastrously top-heavy.

Crews fight ice with mallets and baseball bats, knocking it off the rails and the pot stack hour after hour in conditions nobody would choose to work in. Nothing in the record suggests anyone on the Destination was doing that in the hours before the roll, and the two investigations handle the point with care. Coast Guard findings say the crew failed to remove a substantial buildup of ice on the hull and gear. Professional mariners reviewing the case afterward noted the honest limit on that conclusion: it is impossible to determine why the crew did not actively remove ice, because none of them survived to say.

The Open No. 3 Hold Access Hatch

Loading requirements for the vessel called for hold access hatches to be secured before the boat went to sea. Its No. 3 hold access hatch was not. Once the Destination came out from behind the shelter of the island and into rougher water, that opening gave the sea a direct path below decks.

Downflooding through the hatch ranks among the primary causes the Coast Guard identified, and it explains the speed of the loss. A hull already marginal on stability, already carrying tons of topside ice, and then taking water into a hold does not give anyone a window to react. Roughly two minutes separate the start of that final turn from the end of the transponder track.

Crew Fatigue and the Delivery Deadline

Schedule pressure runs through this case from beginning to end. The Destination came late to the crab season because it had been fishing cod first, and a delivery deadline waited at the far end of the trip. Crew members told people ashore they were worn out before the boat ever sailed.

Investigators flagged fatigue as a contributing factor on both sides of the ledger. Tired people make worse decisions about whether to sail into a freezing spray forecast, and tired people sleep instead of standing on an icing deck swinging a bat at the rail. One official account concluded the crew were likely asleep, and therefore not on deck removing the ice that was quietly destroying the boat’s stability margin.

Bait Stowed in the Wrong Place

Bait was loaded on top of the pot stack, contrary to the vessel’s own loading instructions. Weight placed that high works exactly the way ice does, lifting the center of gravity and shrinking whatever righting margin remains. It is a minor item next to 170 tons of ice, and it points to the same underlying problem: the people loading the boat were working without current, accurate limits to load against.

How Much Extra Weight the Destination Was Carrying

The Destination carried roughly 367,000 pounds, about 184 short tons, more than its 1993 stability book accounted for, combining a heavier pot load with ice from the storm. Individual figures in the reports land harder when they are put together: pots weighing 840 pounds against a manual that assumed 700, and about 200 pots on deck.

  1. Pots as assumed: 200 pots at 700 pounds each comes to 140,000 pounds.
  2. Pots as loaded: 200 pots at 840 pounds each comes to 168,000 pounds.
  3. Difference: 28,000 pounds, about 14 short tons, that the 1993 stability book never accounted for.
  4. Ice on top of that: an estimated 339,416 pounds, roughly 170 short tons.
  5. Combined gap: about 367,000 pounds, near 184 short tons, beyond what the paperwork contemplated.

Arithmetic like this is an illustration rather than a naval architecture calculation, since stability depends on where weight sits and not only on how much of it there is. Scale is the point. The pot stack alone ran about 20 percent heavier than the book assumed, and the ice load was more than double the entire weight of the pots.

Every pound of that ice sat above the deck, which is the worst place for it. Stability comes down to how far a hull can heel before it stops wanting to return upright, and topside weight eats that margin directly. A crabber loaded to its documented limit still has some of that margin in hand. One loaded past a limit nobody had recalculated since 1993, then coated in 170 tons of ice, may have had none by the time the sun came up.

Who the Investigators Blamed for the Sinking

The NTSB placed the blame mainly on Captain Hathaway for sailing into hazardous conditions and not clearing the ice, while the Coast Guard Marine Board pointed more at owner David Wilson for failing to keep the vessel’s stability information current. Two federal bodies examined the loss and published separate findings that overlap on the physical facts and part company on responsibility.

What the NTSB Found

Findings from the National Transportation Safety Board came first, in July 2018. The agency concluded that freezing spray coated the Destination and made it disastrously top-heavy, and it placed blame on the captain for departing into hazardous conditions and for failing to remove ice accumulation during the voyage. Agency spokesman Chris O’Neil stated it plainly: “The captain’s decision to proceed into heavy freezing spray conditions without ensuring the Destination had a margin of stability to withstand that accumulation of ice led to the loss of the vessel.”

Sailing into a forecast that promised freezing spray, then not clearing ice as it built, are the two decisions that report turns on.

What the Coast Guard Marine Board Found

Coast Guard investigators released the Marine Board of Investigation report in March 2019, together with a Final Action Memo. Their list of primary causes runs wider: departure in an overloaded condition, a stability book untouched since 1993, downflooding through the unsecured No. 3 hold access hatch, uncleared ice, bait stowed high, and a fatigued crew. On the speed of the loss, the report states that within a matter of minutes the vessel started to capsize and sink, and that the crew had very little time, if any, to react.

Responsibility in that document points at the owner at least as much as the captain. Wilson’s failure to supply federally mandated information about how much gear the boat could safely carry is treated as a root cause, not a filing error.

Where the Two Findings Disagree

Read side by side, the NTSB report is a story about a captain’s judgment and the Coast Guard report is a story about a vessel nobody kept current on paper. Both are partly right, and the two are less contradictory than they first appear. Hathaway made the call to sail and the call to keep fishing in spray. He made those calls without a stability book that described the boat he was standing on, which is the document the owner was legally required to provide.

Anyone trying to decide which account carries more weight should lean toward the Coast Guard findings. They are the ones attached to enforcement action, and they address a systemic failure, a vessel operating for 24 years on stability information that no longer matched it, rather than one morning’s decisions. Both agencies agreed on a point that is easy to miss in the blame question: the safety regulations already on the books, if they had been followed, could have prevented the sinking.

I put more weight on the owner’s responsibility because the captain was asked to make loading and departure decisions with a stability book that no longer described the boat he commanded. Hathaway still made consequential choices about weather, bait placement and the voyage, but the missing update affected the basic limit on what the vessel could safely carry. A captain can follow a manual only if it matches the hull, equipment and gear actually in use. Here, that foundation had been allowed to become obsolete.

What the Coast Guard Did After the Report

The Coast Guard pursued civil penalties against the owner but did not pursue new rulemaking after the report. Publication of findings is usually the halfway mark in a marine casualty case, and in this instance only one of those two next steps moved forward.

Civil Penalties Against the Owner

Civil penalties, not criminal charges, came out of the investigation. Coast Guard investigators recommended that David Wilson, the principal owner and a former Sand Point resident, be held civilly liable for failing to disclose the vessel’s increased weight and changed configuration to Captain Hathaway, and the service pursued penalties against the owners in Washington state. No criminal charges were recommended against anyone connected with the boat.

Whether those penalties were ultimately paid, reduced or appealed is not something the available reporting settles. As of September 2026, the outcome of that enforcement action is best treated as unresolved in public sources rather than assumed in either direction.

Why No New Rules Followed

Rulemaking was the obvious next step, and the Coast Guard declined to take it. Measures raised during the process included limits on crab pot weight, mandatory records of vessel modifications, and policies addressing crew fatigue. Regulators concluded that existing rules already covered every failure involved, which matches the position both agencies took on the sinking being preventable under the law as written.

Instead of regulation, the service committed to expanded outreach promoting stability training for fishermen and boat owners. Training answers an enforcement problem only if the people who need it show up. What the decision leaves in place is the same dependency that failed here: a crew’s safety rests on an owner keeping the stability book current and handing the captain numbers that match the hull.

Questions the Investigation Left Open

The investigation left three questions open: why no distress call went out, whether the wreck was ever physically surveyed, and whether the crab fleet changed its practices afterward. Much about the Destination is settled, and it is worth being precise about which parts are not before repeating any of it.

Silence is the first open question. No distress call went out, and no failure of the radio or the steering was ever established, so the absence of a mayday has never been explained. Mariners reviewing the case have offered two theories. Ice building unevenly on one side, followed by a shift in wind, could have taken the boat past its righting point too fast for anyone to reach a radio. Alternatively, a large wave through the wheelhouse windows could have destroyed communications and steering in the same instant.

Wreckage is the second. The public record from these investigations does not document any salvage or physical survey of the hull, which matters because a wreck examination is normally how a downflooding path gets confirmed instead of inferred from loading records.

Fleet-wide change is the third. Beyond the outreach commitment, no set of industry reforms traceable to this casualty appears in the available sources. Claims that the crab fleet overhauled its practices after the Destination deserve skepticism unless someone can name the rule or the program. Family matters, memorials and any later litigation by relatives of the crew sit outside the investigation documents entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was the Destination on Deadliest Catch?

Sources reviewed for this article do not document the Destination as a featured vessel on the television show. It fished the same Bering Sea crab fleet the program follows, which is why the sinking is often written about under that heading. Treat any claim that the boat appeared regularly on screen as unverified.

How Long Did the Destination Take to Sink?

About two minutes elapsed between the start of the final turn shown on the transponder and the loss of the signal. Reports describe the sinking variously as happening within a matter of minutes or within roughly four minutes. Either way, the crew had almost no time to act, which is consistent with the absence of a mayday call.

Were Any Bodies Ever Recovered?

None of the six crew members were recovered. Searchers located a debris field with buoys, a life ring bearing the vessel’s name and an oil sheen, but no survivors and no remains. The men are presumed to have gone down with the boat in February 2017.

Did Anyone Face Criminal Charges?

Nobody was charged criminally. Coast Guard investigators recommended civil liability for principal owner David Wilson over the failure to give the captain accurate stability information, and the service pursued civil penalties in Washington state. Criminal charges were specifically not recommended.

Where Exactly Did the Destination Sink?

The vessel went down near St. George Island in the Bering Sea, one of the Pribilof Islands, roughly 200 miles north of Unalaska, Alaska. It had departed Dutch Harbor on Unalaska two days earlier. Waters in that area are known for heavy freezing spray, strong squalls and severe tidal conditions in winter.

Anyone reading about this case for the first time usually arrives looking for a villain, and the record does not supply a clean one. A boat left port heavier than its own paperwork allowed, carrying gear nobody had weighed against the manual, with an owner who had not updated that manual through 24 years of modifications and a captain who sailed into a forecast he had seen a hundred times before. Ice did the rest in a few hours. The practical lesson the investigations agree on is unglamorous: a current stability book, gear weights that match it, secured hatches and a crew rested enough to clear ice are what keep a crabber upright, and every one of those was already required by law in February 2017.

What This Page Does Not Publish

  • I do not cover the families’ private lives or memorials for the six men.
  • I leave out later changes across the crab fishing industry and keep the focus on the Destination.
  • I do not treat television coverage as part of this account of the sinking.

References

Author Profile

Eric Dawson
Eric Dawson
I'm Eric Dawson, the writer behind The Money Watch. I live in the Columbus, Ohio area and I write about the ordinary questions that turn out to be complicated: computers, shopping, food, travel, parking, small businesses, fees, rules and products. Every article starts with the official page, the maker or the agency, then the sources that check it, and I say plainly where they disagree and what I would do. More about how I work is on the About page.