Houseboat Explodes In Bay
Owner made it to dinghy as fire bloomed
 David Carr Photos
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(7/31/2008) As the sun set over Gardiner’s Bay on Tuesday, an explosion and fire, possibly sparked by a generator, destroyed a houseboat off the north side of Gardiner’s Island, creating a large black plume of smoke.
The 45-foot Holiday Mansion International houseboat was reduced to “a smoldering pile at the end of Bostwick’s Point,” said Frank Kennedy, a senior harbormaster for the East Hampton Town Marine Patrol.
William Taylor of Woodstock, Conn., the boat’s owner, was aboard at the time of the explosion, but got away unharmed.
David Carr of Amagansett and New York City was fishing on his powerboat about 200 yards away at about 8 p.m. when he heard a sound like a cannon going off. “As I cast, there was a bang, and a puff of smoke,” he said. “The front part of the boat, from the bow to the windshield, blew up into two pieces.”
As the pieces fell back into the water, Mr. Carr and a fishing buddy, Trond Myhr of New York City, realized the gravity of the situation. They rushed to the houseboat, which had been peacefully anchored for hours about 500 yards southwest of Bostwick’s Point, Mr. Carr said. They reached it in “15 seconds,” he said.
Mr. Taylor, soaked from the waist down, was lying on his back in his dinghy alongside the houseboat when the fishermen got to him. Mr. Carr said it looked as though Mr. Taylor had tried to jump from the houseboat to the dinghy just before the explosion, but had only partially made it.
Mr. Myhr, who used to volunteer with the East Hampton Ambulance Association, checked Mr. Taylor’s pulse and gave him water.
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 As the smoke from his boat drifted overhead, William Taylor used an inhaler after being rescued from his dinghy near Gardiner’s Island. Trond Myhr helped him.
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He was stunned. He was in shock,” Mr. Carr said. Mr. Taylor, who was trying to catch his breath, could barely answer the question “Is there anyone else on board?”
Mr. Carr circled his powerboat around the burning houseboat, looking for bodies, he said, while he used his radio to call the Coast Guard. Although he said the emergency response was “pretty good,” the Coast Guard had some trouble understanding where Bostwick’s Point was.
Mr. Carr said he told the dispatcher all the Coast Guard needed to do was to look for the smoke. The Marine Patrol’s log shows that the Coast Guard alerted the patrol to the fire at 8:14 p.m.
Meanwhile, secondary explosions made the fire even more intense. The windows were blown out and flames were shooting from within, Mr. Carr said. “We could feel [the heat] on our faces,” he said. Dragging Mr. Taylor’s dinghy with them, they drove away from the flames, as other boats also responded.
“Nobody could have survived if they had been sleeping on that boat,” Mr. Carr said. “You couldn’t get on the boat to save anybody,” he said. “It happened so fast. It was incredible.”
 Coast guardsmen responded to the scene.
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Alex Balsam of East Hampton was fishing from Susan Ryan’s boat by the Ruins, a popular fishing spot just north of Gardiner’s Island, when he heard what “sounded like a cannon,” he said yesterday. A few minutes later, he and his friends noticed flames coming from a boat a distance away. “We took off to check it out,” he said.
Their boat was the third to arrive, even before the Coast Guard or Marine Patrol. “The boat was already on fire front to back,” Mr. Balsam said. The flames had destroyed most of the houseboat down to the water line, he added.
Mr. Balsam’s powerboat stuck around for about 15 minutes, and they saw the fire burn the houseboat’s anchor line. The houseboat then drifted onto a sand spit at Bostwick’s Point, he said.
Mr. Carr said a small, rubber Coast Guard boat with three people aboard arrived first from about 10 nautical miles away on the North Fork. Then a Coast Guard vessel, with about six to eight people aboard, was on the scene, followed by two officers aboard a Marine Patrol vessel.
What they found was “a fully involved fire,” Mr. Kennedy said.
 Susan Ryan
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Mr. Taylor told Marine Patrol officers that the fire began when he started his generator, which he had stopped to work on during a trip to see a friend in Coecles Harbor, Shelter Island, according to Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Kennedy said East Hampton Town police detectives would take over the investigation into what caused the fire. The boat was still smoldering late yesterday morning, he said.
Shallow waters prevented the Coast Guard and Marine Patrol from fighting the fire. Mr. Kennedy said the explosion destroyed the boat almost immediately.
“There was no way to fight the fire because we couldn’t get boats in; the water was too shallow there,” he said. The Coast Guard and Marine Patrol officers watched from about 200 yards away as the boat burned, he said.
About 100 gallons of gasoline and two 20-pound propane tanks were aboard the houseboat. “Anytime there’s a boat fire, there’s going to be things popping,” Mr. Kennedy said.
That the boat ran aground on a spit of Gardiner’s Island that had no beach grass was fortunate, he said. “Had it been in an area of grass, the island might have caught fire, too.”
Mr. Kennedy said that Don Mackey, who runs the Captain Kidd, a boat that takes people to and from Gardiner’s Island, also responded to make sure the island was safe.
The aftermath could have been even worse, Mr. Kennedy said, explaining that Mr. Taylor was lucky to have made it off the boat safely. Mr. Taylor was taken to the town commercial dock at Gann Road in East Hampton, where medical personnel evaluated him, although he did not appear to be injured, Mr. Kennedy said.
The Marine Patrol was continuing to monitor the boat as it smoldered yesterday. According to Mr. Kennedy, cleaning up the wreckage will be left to Mr. Taylor’s insurance company.