EAST Magazine: The Last Voyage

On March 22, 1984, the Wind Blown, a commercial fishing boat, departed from Montauk Harbor on eastern Long Island around dusk to begin its first trip of the early-spring season. The four-man crew planned a weeklong trip to catch tilefish about 120 miles offshore.

It was a gray, frigid, 40-degree afternoon. A light easterly wind indicated the possibility of a brewing storm, but it was nothing that Capt. Michael Stedman thought his 65-foot, steel-hulled boat couldn't handle.

Back then, even vaguely reliable long-term weather forecasting didn't exist. Offshore fishermen received twice-daily weather updates on single-side-band radios. And if you weren't standing in your wheelhouse at five o'clock in the morning and eleven o'clock at night, your radio tuned to channel 2670, you missed it. For commercial fishermen, as Mike knew firsthand, a little weather was nothing to fear — an occupational hazard if ever there was one. Besides, if things got really bad, he could always run back to the harbor and ride out the storm.