DATE: Saturday, August 2, 1997              TAG: 9708020331

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MILES DANIELS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   33 lines

PASSING SHIP SAVES 4 FISHERMEN OFF CAPE HATTERAS

Four fishermen had traveled more than 650 miles from Bermuda and were almost home when their boat sank off Cape Hatteras late Thursday.

A merchant ship rescued the men from a floating raft and is carrying them more than 1,000 miles south to its docking grounds in St. Croix, Virgin Islands.

The men, one of whom is from Manteo, were hoping to be home Thursday night. Now, they won't even arrive at their detoured destination until sometime Monday.

``They hit something in the water. But we don't know what,'' said Jereme Parker, a petty officer at Coast Guard Base Cape Hatteras, the station that first received the sinking vessel's distress call.

Michael Merritt of Manteo, Jim Bayne of Newport News, Heath Allon of Virginia Beach and Bobbie Lambe of Bermuda had spent nearly two weeks chasing blue marlin off Bermuda. They left the island Wednesday morning and were only an hour-and-a-half away from their Manteo docking ground when their 55-foot boat, No Excuses, went down.

The merchant vessel Philadelphia picked the men up about 50 miles off Cape Hatteras. But because the ship was on a tight schedule delivering cargo to the Virgin Islands, its captain decided not to bring the fishermen to shore on the Outer Banks.

``They won't stray from their schedule too much,'' Petty Officer Harry Craft of the Coast Guard's Portsmouth, Va., headquarters said of merchant ships. KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT BOAT RESCUE AT SEA U.S. COAST GUARD

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