With the Lucy hauled, painted from stem to stern and ready to go, Chris begins resetting the full string in early April. With his tiptop string of gear and the Lucy running like a Swiss watch, the upcoming season holds great promise. Barely four weeks into the summer run, early on the morning of July 17th, the unthinkable happens.
Five miles south of Land's End, while steaming to his next trawl, Lucy's onboard computer's power supply, dead shorts, a massive electrical fire almost instantaneously consuming the ship's primary systems. Spewing toxic smoke, nearly overcoming Chris as he frantically fights to quell the high amp DC short circuit, the beautiful Lucy, in all of her splendor . . . quickly ignites.
Fed by thirty tons of cedar and oak, soon enhanced by many hundreds of gallons of fuel and oil, she roasts in flames as high as twenty feet. Chris watches at first from the life raft, then from a Coast Guard cutter dispatched to the scene.
A scene from hell as a dream nearly three decades in the making, Chris's pride and joy almost four years in its creation, and his own heart and soul . . . all slip beneath the waves in less than three hours time.
Briefly hospitalized for smoke inhalation and shock, Chris himself sinks into a black hole. Picking himself up by his bootstraps, he moves ahead, attaining his 100-ton Coast Guard License in November. Finishing out the year by diving head first into his studio, he writes and records nine of the most emotionally heartfelt songs he's ever produced, the result of that effort deemed worthy of replication.