Coast Guard suspends search for Marblehead tugboat captain

NEWPORT, RI – The Coast Guard has suspended its search for a missing Marblehead man about nine miles off the coast, according to Petty Officer Luke Clayton.?It?s more like we?re on standby,” said Clayton of the Coast Guard?s District 1 Command Center. “If we get new details that could assist us to find him, the search can be spurred again.”Douglas O?Leary of Marblehead believes his son, Brendan O?Leary, 48, a tugboat captain, likely fell off his New York-based tugboat, he said during a brief telephone interview Thursday afternoon.?It?s under investigation, but they hadn?t seen him so they assumed he fell off,” Clayton said.The search for Brendan O?Leary began on Wednesday at about 2:40 p.m., when the crew of the New York-based 91-foot tugboat Steven-Scott, notified them that he had last been seen around 1:30 p.m., and they believed he had fallen overboard, Clayton said. The boat was about nine miles off the coast of Newport when O?Leary was reported missing, he added.Clayton said the search covered more than 800 square miles of water and turned up “absolutely nothing so far.”Douglas O?Leary said he was “quite satisfied with the print-out reports” of the search, but did not elaborate further.O?Leary may not have been wearing a life-jacket when he fell overboard, according to a Coast Guard press release.Clayton said the search involved “several methods” of search, including a helicopter and four response boats.A 47-foot Motor Lifeboat crew from Coast Guard Station Point Judith, a 45-foot Response Boat-Medium crew from Coast Guard Station Castle Hill, an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod and the Coast Guard Cutter Tiger Shark from Newport, were dispatched for the search, according to a statement the Coast Guard released Wednesday afternoon.Clayton said the temperature of the water, currently about 52 degrees, “can be dangerous.”?We responded quickly, launching boat, cutter and aircraft crews,” said Petty Officer First Class Joaquin Alayola, a search and rescue controller at the District 1 Command Center, in a press release. “We are putting every effort into locating him and continue to hope for the best outcome.”Taylor Provost can be reached at [email protected].