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Questions linger over boat tragedy.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

It's only at night that Marsha Sundberg has time to grieve.

The daylight hours are just too hectic, fending off creditors collecting bills that her husband, Barry, is not around to pay and searching for ways to supplement the $2,000 he brought home each month. She must focus on putting her life back together, now that her husband is lost at sea.

"I come home from work, sit down, read the newspaper, throw mail on the table, get that stuff sorted out, I sit down and I just cry," says Sundberg, of Cheney, Wash. "He's not going to be coming through that door. He's not going to be calling me. He just had a grandson, and he's not going to watch him grow up."

Barry Sundberg was aboard the charter fishing boat Taki-Tooo that capsized Father's Day weekend near Garibaldi, killing nine people and leaving Barry and another man missing.

Now Marsha Sundberg is haunted by questions that may never be answered:

Why didn't the boat's captain wait until it was safe to cross the treacherous Tillamook Bar? Why did he let Sundberg's husband and 16 other would-be fisherman step aboard the vessel after the U.S. Coast Guard had posted two "rough bar" warnings, banning recreational and uninspected commercial boats from venturing into the ocean?

And perhaps the most frustrating question of all: Why didn't he order the passengers to don life jackets, with 20-foot swells breaking in front of the boat?

"I heard that the Coast Guard told them it was...