THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, January 24, 1996            TAG: 9601240377
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: HATTERAS INLET                     LENGTH: Short :   45 lines

CAPTAIN'S LUCK SEEMS NOT TO HAVE TURNED FIRST, HE LOST HIS SON. NEXT, HE LOST THE BOAT NAMED FOR HIM.

Two months ago Capt. C. T. Hayes lost his 7-year-old son, Zack, in an automobile accident on Wanchese road.

For the first time since the accident, Hayes went back to sea Monday in his 40-foot trawler, ``Capt. Zack,'' named for youngest boy.

On Tuesday morning, headed for home with 35,000 pounds of dogfish, Hayes lost the ``Capt. Zack,'' too, in waters known as the ``Graveyard of the Atlantic.''

Hayes and his oldest son, Turner, 18, were about eight miles southeast of Hatteras Inlet when their vessel began taking on water. Within half an hour, the commercial watermen had waved down a passing boat and jumped aboard. But by then, only the pilothouse of the ``Capt. Zack'' remained above the calm sea. The captain who rescued Hayes and his son tried to tow the trawler to shore. But the fishing vessel sank too quickly.

``This was the first time we'd been out working since the accident,'' Hayes, 40, said Tuesday afternoon from the docks at Hatteras Village. ``We probably had $7,000 worth of fish on board when she went down.''

A 44-foot U.S. Coast Guard boat picked up C.T. and Turner Hayes from the other vessel and took the watermen - who were unharmed - to shore. Coast Guard officials anchored the ``Capt. Zack'' and marked the visible part of its pilot house with a light. Coast Guard spokesman Joe Strozeski said Hayes' insurance company was contemplating trying to re-float the ``Capt. Zack'' Tuesday evening.

Hayes, a Wanchese native who has fished commercially all his life, said he didn't know what caused his trawler to sink so quickly. He'd been fishing since early Monday, he said. He noticed the leak ``about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.''

``She just started feeling sort of sluggish,'' Hayes said of his boat. ``I don't know if she broke a hose or what. But she sure took on a lot of water in a short amount of time.

``The only thing I got off the boat, thank God, was this,'' said Hayes, proudly displaying a laminated school photograph of the smiling, dark-haired Zack, killed in a crash while riding with another brother. by CNB