Two crewmen planned to go out with him the next day. One was Tomas Hammond, 27, the father of a 5-year-old son. Hammond had spent his entire life on the water, his family later recalled. The other was Tyler Sawyer, 15. According to the Bangor Daily News, he had dropped out of high school and joined the crew of “No Limits” about a month before. Maine’s child labor laws prevent 15-year-olds from slicing deli meat or collecting tickets for amusement park rides, but not from working on board a commercial fishing vessel.

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Of the three of them, Hutchinson would be the only one to make it back alive. Documents obtained by The Washington Post show that on Friday, he entered a plea agreement saying that he would plead guilty to two counts of seaman’s manslaughter, under a little-known statute from the 1800s that can be used to charge boat captains with negligence.

As part of the plea agreement, Hutchinson has agreed to a set of facts laid out by prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Maine. According to the document, Hutchinson smoked marijuana with Sawyer’s father on that Friday afternoon at the end of October. They talked about the foul weather that was predicted, and Hutchinson assured the man that he would take care of his son. He had enough time to haul up his traps and head back home before it got really bad, he said. Sawyer’s father didn’t know that Hutchinson had illegally purchased 20 tablets of immediate action oxycodone that day.

That night, Hutchinson attended a Halloween party and drank a rum and coke. Just a few hours later, his girlfriend took his truck to pick up Sawyer and Hammond, and brought them to his 45-foot lobster boat, which he had named “No Limits.” Rain was beginning to fall as they left the dock at around 1 a.m. on Nov. 1.

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They got to Eleven Mile Ridge, a fishing area southwest of Matinicus Island, before sunrise and began hauling traps from the cold depths. After about three hours, the weather was getting worse, and the crew agreed to head home. Hutchinson took the helm, “surfing” the boat through the waves, which at times were more than 14 feet high. Weather sensor buoys in the area detected winds gusting at over 40 knots, the equivalent of 46 mph, and well over the limit for a small-craft advisory.

Then a large wave flipped “No Limits” over, stern over bow. Hutchinson, whose blood would later test positive for opiates and THC, managed to swim out from underneath the boat and pull himself on top of its slippery keel.

“I kept screaming for Tom and Tyler, but I didn’t hear or see them again,” he later told the Bangor Daily News.

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He clung to the hull for an hour or two in the crashing waves. Then, the life raft popped out from under the boat. Hutchinson climbed into it, then cut himself loose from “No Limits” because he feared the boat would sink and drag him down with it, according to the documents filed with the plea agreement.

At around 1:20 p.m., the boat’s emergency radio beacon went off, sending out a distress signal and alerting the Coast Guard that the boat was in danger of sinking. The Coast Guard put out an appeal to all marine vessels in the area, but only got a response from one fisherman, who happened to be the uncle of Hutchinson’s then-girlfriend. The man, who had been fishing east of Matinicus Island that morning, chose not to go back out and try to rescue the lobstermen.

By then, the temperature was 43 degrees, and the water was only 10 degrees warmer. The Coast Guard and Maine Marine Patrol headed out into the storm to look for the missing lobstermen. At around 4:08 p.m., a crew from Cape Cod spotted a life raft. Hutchinson sent up a flare.

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When the Coast Guard hoisted him up into the helicopter, Hutchinson told the crew that he had last seen Hammond and Sawyer on the back of the lobster boat’s overturned hull, and that they hadn’t been wearing life jackets or survival suits. Later, from the hospital, he told his father that when he swam out from underneath “No Limits” after the boat capsized, he saw the two men clinging to its keel. Then, a big wave had crashed into the boat, and he didn’t see them anymore.

An hour after rescuing Hutchinson, the Coast Guard found “No Limits,” which was almost entirely underwater. There was no sign of life on board.

Hutchinson was transported to the Maine Medical Center in Portland. Word quickly traveled around Tenant’s Harbor and nearby towns. According to court records, one of the drug dealers who had sold oxycodone to Hutchinson the day before contacted Sawyer’s father and suggested that he ask the Coast Guard to conduct a drug test. Before releasing him from the hospital that night, a police officer took a sample of Hutchinson’s blood, which contained 8.7 nanograms of oxycodone per milliliter and 6.2 nanograms of THC per milliliter.

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The following afternoon, as a snowstorm hit the coast of Maine, Hutchinson called Sawyer’s father and told him that he had been knocked unconscious when the boat capsized. Sawyer’s father wanted to know if he had been “dirty” when he took the boat out to sea that day. Hutchinson said yes, according to the document that he signed as part of the plea agreement.

That same day, the Portland Press Herald reported that the Coast Guard was calling off its search after spending 17 hours looking for the missing men amid 22-foot waves. They issued certificates of presumed death to Sawyer and Hammond’s next of kin. In 2015, Hutchinson and his boat’s insurer settled with the two families for a total of $360,000, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Hutchinson was charged with two counts of seaman’s manslaughter on Dec. 14, 2016, and released on $10,000 bail a few days later. The charges carried a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. But because law enforcement officials failed to obtain a warrant before drawing Hutchinson’s blood, an appeals court judge ruled that the results could only be used in a trial if Hutchinson testified that he had not used drugs.

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Three months after Hutchinson was let out on bail, emergency medical technicians responded to a 911 call at his girlfriend’s house in Friendship, Maine, and found that he wasn’t breathing and had a faint pulse. They revived him with Narcan, which reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. Hutchinson later admitted that he had overdosed on heroin, court records show. He was arrested by the Maine Marine Patrol on March 23, 2017, for violating the terms of his bail, with prosecutors arguing that he presented a danger to himself and others by continuing to operate his lobster boat.

Hutchinson, now 30, is scheduled to appear in court to plead guilty to seaman’s manslaughter on Sept. 26. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors are recommending a four-year prison sentence, followed by three years of supervised release, with credit for the time that he has already served while awaiting trial.

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