B9

Derwin Gowan
Telegraph-Journal

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GRAND MANAN - A search for a kayaker believed to be lost on the Bay of Fundy ended happily early Friday.

Richard Thurlow, 33, set out Wednesday evening in a five-metre kayak from Lubec, Maine, on the 15-kilometre trip to Grand Manan. He had made the trip before.

He arrived on the island, checked in at Canada Customs, and booked into a hotel. On Thursday night he ran across a news report that the United States Coast Guard was looking for him.

A family member reported him missing at about midday Thursday when Thurlow did not return home as expected by 11 a.m. Thursday.

The Coast Guard dispatched a 12.5-metre utility boat crew from Eastport, Maine. A Falcon Jet crew from Cape Cod, Mass., already on a standard marine patrol, searched from Lubec to Grand Manan. They found no signs of Thurlow.

Canada Customs reported that Thurlow spent the night on Grand Manan but nobody back home heard of or saw him since he left Lubec.

"With the weather turning bad, he may have decided to spend another night on the island," search and rescuer controller Paul Conner at Coast Guard Sector Northern New England said in the U.S. Coast Guard news release. "He doesn't have a cellphone or a radio, so there's no way we can know where he is or if he's all right."

After learning there was a search for him, Thurlow called the coast guard at about 12:30 a.m. AT Friday.

"And he was not in any distress at any point," coast guard search and rescue specialist Kenneth Stuart said from Portland, Maine. "He was at the destination on Grand Manan in a hotel."

As far as Thurlow was concerned he was following his itinerary, but the family member back home felt otherwise, Stuart said.

People taking trips on the water should leave a "float plan" with the folks at home, and take along some means of communication, U.S. Coast Guard public affairs officer Luke Pinneo said