PORTLAND – A Maine fishing boat was missing as the winter’s biggest storm lashed the Northeast last week. But after agonizing days of waiting, the Gulf Mariner returned to its home port this weekend.

The 45-foot gill-netter left Portland on March 2, bound for waters northeast of Georges Bank. The captain and crew had heard the Coast Guard’s warnings of a fierce winter storm that was building strength as it swept up the coast.

Three days later, the vessel’s owners tried to contact the Gulf Mariner’s 34-year-old skipper, Tim Daggett, as the storm grew more intense.

By last Wednesday, every effort to contact the Gulf Mariner had failed.

“We put feelers out, and found out the whole fleet had come in,” said Cheri Tobey, who owns the Gulf Mariner with her husband, Chris. “I tried to stay calm, but I felt physically ill, very upset and scared.”

Word that the boat was out and “unreported” spread quickly through Portland’s fishing community.

Gale-force winds tore across the seas as nervous fishermen and their families waited for any news about the fate of the Gulf Mariner. Their only consolation was that that the emergency distress beacon aboard the year-old Gulf Mariner had not gone off.

“That was all we had to hold onto,” said Cheri Tobey.

With all efforts to contact the vessel having failed, the Coast Guard station on Cape Cod sent out a jet Wednesday to search for the Gulf Mariner.