Video: Sequim man presumed dead after crab boat capsizes

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SEQUIM, Wash. - A 55-year-old Sequim man is believed to have drowned Friday after a crab boat capsized off the Oregon coast.

One person was able to escape when the boat capsized near the north jetty of Oregon's Tillamook Bay, but Sequim resident George Shaw and another man are presumed dead.

Those close to Shaw say he was trying to support his family when he died.

Shaw's family says he was a logger by trade, but decided to go crabbing this year because logging jobs were scarce. He traveled from Sequim just before Thanksgiving.

"He would go hunting not because he wanted to go hunting, but because he wanted food on the table," Shaw's stepson Chris Connors said.

On Friday morning, the 42-foot vessel named Network went over as it tried to travel through a bar to exit Tillamook Bay. The crab boat was hit by what the skipper estimated was a 13-foot wave.

"A big wave came and rolled us over and it was just a fluke thing," skipper Darrin Mobley said.

Mobley was able to escape, but Shaw and 44-year-old Timothy Leake of Tillamook are believed to have drowned.

Eric Olm says he watched helplessly as Shaw was swept away by the fast and cold current on Tillamook Bay.

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55-year-old George Shaw of Sequim is believed to have drowned Friday after a crab boat capsized off the Oregon coast.

"Our eyes are locked. He was just pleading for help and I kept trying to tell him come on you can make it," said Olm, a captain who was rescued. "He disappeared right when the Coast Guard got on top of him."

Shaw's family says they want people to remember him as a warm and generous father and husband who loved the outdoors and the Oregon coast, where he fished for the last 15 years.

"He was a very outspoken and passionate man," Connors said.

The Coast Guard says none of the crew members were wearing life jackets.