Fatal Forecast: An Incredible True Story of Courage in a Savage Storm

Gr 5 Up–On a Friday in November 1980, two commercial fishing boats were working around Georges Bank, a rich shoal about 100 miles off Cape Cod. In part due to two damaged weather buoys, none of the fishermen expected the wild storm that whipped up overnight, with 70-foot waves and winds gusting over 80 miles per hour. One wave caused the Fair Wind, a 50-foot lobster boat, to pitchpole, trapping crewman Eddie Hazard inside the flooded pilot house. Hazard was able to swim clear of the doomed boat and get into a covered raft, only to spend the next 50 hours battling the storm alone while facing frostbite and hypothermia. In this young reader edition of his 2007 book, Tougias moves the perspective around several of the surviving captains and crew, including a Coast Guard search-and-rescue team out of Boston with their 210-foot cutter. The author has made a cottage industry of modern shipwreck and rescue tales and is superb at framing tense drama and building suspense with mounting nautical details. For some readers, it will be a thrill ride, others may find it too much. There is no source list, but Tougias includes a lengthy author’s note, detailing how he came to contact crew members of the various crafts and spent several days interviewing Hazard. In addition, many details are drawn from a lawsuit against the weather service.