In the early hours last Thursday morning, local fisherman Travis Meyer was asleep on his boat when his bait tank clogged, causing the vessel to capsize.
Meyer says after a full day of fishing off the Santa Barbara coast, at around 2:30 a.m., he woke up to water spilling onto his deck, with the boat beginning to tip over.
“I woke up to a very slight list, and approximately 30 to 40 seconds later, the boat was rolling over. I had just enough time to get a distress call,” Meyer recalled.
He says he sent a mayday to a friend who had been fishing nearby, and just minutes after positioning himself on top of the overturned boat, help arrived.
“There was another light boat nearby. Luckily, he woke up. He was sleeping up in the wheelhouse,” Meyer told KSBY.
When the rescue boats arrived at the capsized vessel, Meyer says he tried recovering what was salvageable but much of his gear, including dozens of new fishing rods, was lost.
Around that time, Travis’ wife, Amanda, woke up to a call from the Coast Guard.
“They informed me that Travis’ boat had overturned and he had been pulled from the water,” she recalled.
Travis says at sunrise, crews with Towboat US Ventura pulled his overturned vessel, “The Obsessed,” into the Santa Barbara Harbor where Amanda was there to meet him.
“I was very sick to my stomach when I first heard about it,” Amanda added. “I went down to the harbor when Travis came in, and the first thing I did was run onto the dock and give him a hug and break down in tears.”
While Travis says he is grateful to have made it back safely, he says he's likely looking at more than $100,000 worth of boat damage and lost equipment.
“A lot of the construction of the boat is balsa wood under the fiberglass and it is pretty waterlogged. It is sealed in there, so it is going to start to rot, unfortunately,” he explained. “So we are looking at maybe a full rebuild.”
Once Travis’ boat made it back to their home in Lompoc, Amanda set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money for his rebuilding efforts. Nearly 200 people have already pledged donations.
The Meyers say that in spite of the situation, the local community has had their back.
“We have gotten messages from people I don’t even know, Travis doesn’t even know. They want to send him gear, they want to send him rods, they want to get him on podcasts, they want to get his word out. It is amazing to see that there is still humanity in the world when things don’t go right,” Amanda said.
“I have faith that everything will work out, and we will get through this one as well,” Travis added.
So far, the Meyers' GoFundMe page has surpassed $20,000 in community donations.
On November 19, Santa Barbara restaurant The Lark will also be hosting a benefit dinner and all proceeds will go toward helping Travis get back on the water.
