From Romantic Sail to Night of Terror : 1

Aboard her boyfriend's sailboat, Patricia Morgan curled up with a book and started to relax. She and Carlo Fraizzoli had had a hectic week in Baltimore. But now, heading for a scenic cove 25 miles south on the Magothy River, the couple enjoyed the idyllic June evening as they sailed across the Chesapeake Bay, leaving the city's sweltering heat behind them.

"I'm glad there's no one out here to hear you," Morgan, 26, teased Fraizzoli, 32, who sat next to the tiller practicing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" on his harmonica.

She glanced up from her book a few minutes later and saw that clouds to the north had darkened the skies over the city. “Did you see that?” she asked as two lightning bolts crackled behind the boat. "Carlo, can we put the motor on and head to shore?” He tried to reassure her, but she persisted: “You don't know how fast these storms come up on the bay!"Within seconds, the sunlit sky above them had turned dark. Whitecaps sprang up on the water, and sheets of rain began to batter the boat. Fraizzoli hurried to release the jib as Morgan jumped up to get a life jacket from the cabin. Before she could grab one, a powerful gust slammed into the boat, tilting the sloop onto its side and sending the mainsail into the water. As the boat tipped, Morgan lost her balance and tumbled onto the rail. Looking facedown into the waves and fearing the boat was capsizing, she made a split-second decision—"I'll be safer in the water" and jumped into the bay.

As Morgan floundered in the waves, Fraizzoli righted the boat. "Swim to me!" he yelled to Morgan, throwing her a life preserver. It slipped through her hands as the current began to pull the boat away from her. Fraizzoli started the motor and steered the boat toward the sound of her voice, tossing her the jib line. She missed it, and the motor stalled. Gulping air between the six-foot waves, Morgan watched the powerless boat drift away and out of sight. It was after 9 p.m., and the sea and sky were black.

Patricia Morgan was a fighter. Her father left home when she was young. Her mother was a drug addict, leaving Morgan to raise herself and her two younger sisters with the help of her maternal grandmother.

She started work as a waitress at 14. By 18, she held two jobs and was renting a townhouse near Baltimore for herself and her sisters. Two years ago, working as a patient service coordinator at a pulmonary clinic, Morgan brought her mother home and helped her through drug rehab and breast cancer treatment.

As she struggled in the water, Morgan decided that if she could overcome everything else, she would triumph in this situation too. But she wasn't a strong swimmer and wasn't wearing a life jacket. Don't panic, she told herself. Pace yourself, and don't get water in your lungs. She started swimming toward dim lights on the shore, about two miles away. Then, directly ahead of her, she saw an enormous looming shape: a 200-foot barge, being towed by a tugboat. She'd been pulled into the middle of a shipping channel.

The Chesapeake Bay, stretching 200 miles from Virginia Beach into Maryland, is a summer playground for more than 15 million people. It's also a busy commercial waterway where deep-sea freighters, some the length of two football fields, move up and down 24 hours a day. Even in daylight, freighter pilots have trouble slowing down or changing course to avoid obstacles in their paths. At night, the obstacles are impossible to see.

From the sailboat, Fraizzoli saw the barge too. It's going to run her over, he thought. I've lost her. Just about everything that could've gone wrong did: The mainsail was in tatters, shredded by the repeated pounding of 60 mph winds. The docking line had fallen off the bow and was now wrapped around the propeller of the outboard motor, jamming it. Fraizzoli had left his ship-to-shore radio, which could have been used to summon rescuers, at home in Baltimore. Helpless and sobbing, he was certain Morgan was dead.

A native of Italy, Fraizzoli had loved sailing since he was a boy. With a degree in accounting and commercial law, he came to America in 2006 and got a job with a shipping company. He immediately signed up with a Baltimore-area sailing school, taking lessons once a week for the next year and a half and joining a racing team. Eventually, he bought a 38-year-old sloop, repainted and rewired it, and proudly flew the red-and-yellow Venetian flag on its stern.

Fraizzoli cursed himself for forgetting the radio. Suddenly, he remembered Morgan's cell phone and dug for it in her purse. With shaking fingers, he punched in 911. Fraizzoli was unsure of his location, so the dispatcher told him to call back: Rescuers would determine the coordinates of the boat by tracking the cell phone signal.