A SINKING FEELING

A mother and daughter are trapped below the deck of a capsized boat. A shrinking air pocket is the only thing keeping them alive.

- Derek Burnett

A steady sea breeze livened up the low swells just enough for the late-day light to dance and scatter along their curves. Here within the inlet connecting Barnegat Bay to the rougher waters of New Jersey's Atlantic coast, it hadn't been a bad afternoon of fishing, so long as you weren't particularly goal-oriented.

Jarett Krause and Gosefina Gonzales were doing what they most loved, which was spending time on the water with their little one, 4-year-old Ryleigh, who was less active than normal, thanks to the cast she wore after fracturing her leg a month earlier. At every opportunity, the family took to the bay in Krause's father's 23-foot pleasure boat, a Wellcraft with a small cabin beneath the deck of the bow. They'd swim and fish, fish and swim, sweet afternoons passing with the tides and winds and dawdling midyear sun.

On this evening of Aug. 7, 2022, Krause and Gonzales were entertaining their friend Ryan Gaudet, along with his 12-year-old daughter, Presley, and his girlfriend, Marisa Schwear. Ryleigh and Presley, having gotten their fill of the wide world, crawled down into the cabin to fiddle with their iPads while the men fished and the women idled.

At about 7 p.m., there came a sudden change around the boat. Where a moment before the water had been placid, it was suddenly rough. And where the breeze had blown stiff and steady, now the wind ranged around as if angling for an attack. That unsettling feeling lasted only a moment before the group heard the crunching sound of the boat's hull striking rock.

Unknown to Krause, a jetty at the north end of Barnegat Inlet does not end where it appears to stop abruptly, but rather continues on underwater, often only a foot or so beneath the surface, depending upon the tide. Although marked, this hazard is frequently struck by boaters.