DATE: Tuesday, May 6, 1997                  TAG: 9705060245

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: STAFF REPORT 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   45 lines

BERMUDA-BOUND CREW FINDS PART OF MISSING BOAT; NO SIGN OF SAILORS

A sailboat's crew discovered a chunk of a missing North Carolina fishing boat floating in the Atlantic last week, but no sign of the three men aboard the craft who disappeared more than a month ago.

Sailors aboard the Bermuda-bound Venturous found the 3-by-6-foot piece of the Char-Lee II, a 40-foot fishing boat last seen in the path of an approaching storm, about 300 miles east of the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.

The fishing boat's emergency position indicating radio beacon, a homing device that helps rescuers find vessels in distress, was still attached to the debris.

``They think it was part of the pilot house bulkhead,'' Coast Guard Petty Officer Brandon Brewer said Monday. ``The EPIRB was still in its bracket.''

The April 27 discovery came weeks after the Coast Guard suspended a massive search for the missing boat, which was last seen March 31.

The Char-Lee II's three-man crew - Jessie Lee Dempsey of Morehead City, N.C., Roy Pickle of Beaufort, N.C., and John M. Williams of Elizabeth, N.J. - had been fishing for grouper and snapper about 30 miles off Cape Lookout, in the North Carolina Outer Banks, when a storm approached.

While the crews of nearby boats headed for cover, the trio aboard the Char-Lee II found that their boat's anchor had snagged on the Atlantic's bottom. They notified fellow fishermen that they planned to ride out the coming weather.

But on returning to the ocean later in the week, their colleagues found that the three and their boat had vanished - prompting a search that involved three Coast Guard cutters, more than a dozen aircraft, the Navy's aircraft carrier George Washington and an armada of private fishing vessels.

Despite criss-crossing a section of the Atlantic the size of California, the searchers turned up no sign of the boat.

The crew aboard the Venturous found the EPIRB in the ``armed'' position, meaning that it was ready to broadcast, Brewer said. It had not been activated, however.

``I guess the people in the sailboat activated it for a few minutes to test it,'' he said, ``but we really don't know whether it worked or not.''

A Portsmouth-based Coast Guard officer flew to Bermuda to recover the piece of wreckage and to meet with the Venturous crew. He is due back in Portsmouth today, Brewer said. KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT BOAT U.S. COAST GUARD

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