Tele Aadsen

writer - fisherman - listener

Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 7th, is a bad day on the ocean.

With the fore­cast call­ing for South­east winds of 35 knots and 11-foot seas, the Ner­ka spends the morn­ing trolling in the mouth of Gilmer Bay. We hadn’t expect­ed to be fish­ing at all today. If we catch any­thing, we rea­son, they’ll be bonus fish, and we’ll already be safe in the harbor’s arms when the wind comes up. On Day 13 of a gru­el­ing trip, a relax­ing after­noon on anchor sounds good.

We eat lunch on the pick short­ly after the wind bares its teeth, but any fur­ther thought of relax­ing whoosh­es over­board with the build­ing gusts. By ear­ly after­noon, eight trollers clus­ter on the bay’s south­ern shelf, strain­ing taut anchor lines. Our com­pan­ions are 48-foot fiber­glass and steel rigs, stur­dy, sea­wor­thy ves­sels. As sea­wor­thy as any of us can be. With September’s onslaught of fall weath­er, no one wants to push their luck. Win­ner of the tough guy award, the final arrival drops his anchor at 3:00.

White­caps slam-dance between boats as the wind holds steady at 39 knots. The gusts are dragon’s breath, vis­i­bly rip-snort­ing through the bay. An elder­ly wood­en troller, locat­ed sev­er­al hours away behind St. Lazaria Island, begins tak­ing on water, and one of our har­bor mates drags anchor. As the cap­tain naps, his boat shoots clear across the anchor­age as if sail-pow­ered, paus­ing a quar­ter-mile from the rocks. Anoth­er troller is charg­ing over to alert him, when he wakes in time to avert disaster.

Dark­ness brings a rare par­don. The man tak­ing on water reports that he’s safe for the night. The gusts let up and the white­caps come down. The drag­on goes to sleep, and so do Joel and I. Deep in relieved dreams, nei­ther of us hear the Coast Guard’s mid­night call to any ves­sels anchored in Gilmer Bay.

*****

Sat­ur­day begins at 4:30, when Joel pulls the anchor and we run into the pitch black. Out Gilmer Bay, past Point Amelia, on to Beaver Point. Though dawn is an hour away, so is the spot we want to drop our hooks. After the pre­vi­ous day’s fren­zied con­di­tions, the sea’s remain­ing bounce feels gentle.

When our fish­ing part­ner Mar­lin joins us on the drag, his voice is grave. “There’s a boat miss­ing. That’s why they were call­ing all of us in the anchor­age last night, to see if they’d made it in there.”

He describes a 28-foot troller, “land­ing craft style” – an open ves­sel rigged with a cou­ple fish­ing davits and out­board motors. “I’ve passed it in the straits,” he says. “Can’t remem­ber the name, but they always wave as they go by.”

Fish­er­men are nev­er a stronger com­mu­ni­ty than in sit­u­a­tions like this. When tragedy cuts one of us down, we all bleed. We throw judg­ment to staunch the flow of fear; our anx­i­ety turns hot, acrid. Envi­sion­ing the worst as fore­gone con­clu­sions, our anger is that of par­ents wait­ing for a teenag­er out long past cur­few. We talk about the “big boats” that holed up tight or head­ed for town, and curse, “What the fuck were they doing out there?”

All morn­ing, the Coast Guard’s orange bird buzzes Kru­zof Island. The usu­al fish­ing chat­ter is eeri­ly absent from the VHF. Through­out the fleet, we all turn up the vol­ume, lean in to fol­low the heli­copter’s search updates as they’re broad­cast across chan­nel 16.

Mid­day, the Sit­ka Moun­tain Res­cue reports debris at Shoal Point. Hearts seize. “Debris” is code for an oil slick on the water, drift­ing buck­ets, mar­itime tomb­stones mark­ing the site where a boat went down. But the heli­copter quick­ly dis­putes this sight­ing. “The debris is tsuna­mi-relat­ed, we can see the Japan­ese writ­ing.” The search goes on.

At 1:40, the State Troop­er patrol ves­sel Courage calls the Coast Guard. “We’ve got one sur­vivor in sight on the beach at Point Amelia. He’s wav­ing, ambu­la­to­ry, and appears to be okay. If you’ve got a helo you can send, landing’s gonna be tough.”

The response is imme­di­ate. “We’re about four min­utes out, eight miles away.”

It’s a very steep, cliff‑y area,” the Troop­er warns. “You’re gonna have to use a hoist.”

Roger that. Thanks for the help.”

*****

Though Joel and I are alone on the Ner­ka, I swear the cab­in rings with every oth­er trollers’ cries of relief when the pilot’s voice comes through the speak­ers. “We’ve got one sur­vivor on board.”

Thanks to the alert man’s expla­na­tions, the pilot relays pre­vi­ous­ly unknown details. At 2:30 on Fri­day after­noon, they went down off Beaver Point. The last troller came into Gilmer at 3:00, I remem­ber. An hour’s run… He would’ve been right in front of them. 

Joel inter­rupts my pen­sive thoughts with his own. “Dude. When we smelled gas earlier…”

Trolling along Beaver Point sev­er­al hours ear­li­er, we’d got­ten a sud­den whiff of gas. Mar­lin had, too, ask­ing his deck­hand to check that their skiff motor wasn’t leak­ing. But there’d been no rain­bow sheen on the water. The ghost­ly vapors were gone almost as soon as we’d smelled them.

Now we stare at each oth­er in too-late dawn­ing hor­ror. “Holy shit… That was their boat we were smelling.”

Shit. I didn’t even think… We should’ve let them know, got­ten them on the scene a few hours earlier.”

Guilt is a cold shroud, and I shud­der. It’s too hor­ri­fy­ing to real­ize that we’d thought­less­ly put­tered over a ship­wreck less than a day old, its peo­ple vanished.

*****

 Now, thanks to the locat­ed sur­vivor, the Coast Guard issues a Pan Pan radio call with addi­tion­al information.

The Coast Guard has received a report of zero-one per­sons in the water in the vicin­i­ty of Gilmer Bay. The per­son is described as a male wear­ing an olive green float coat, dark blue fish­ing pants, locat­ed in or near a light blue fish tote. All ves­sels in the vicin­i­ty are request­ed to keep a sharp look­out, assist if pos­si­ble, and report all sight­ings. This is Coast Guard Sec­tor Juneau, out.”

Not a sur­vival suit – a float coat. I glance at the clock. It’s been almost 24 hours since they went down. Fear again spits forth as frus­tra­tion. Oh, for god’s sake – an olive green float coat? Wear stuff that allows you to be found! Ahead, the coast­line lurks through South­east Alaska’s omnipresent ocean mist. Dense dark for­est meets a char­coal shore. I glance down at myself – black fleece pants, black ther­mal shirt – and make a men­tal note. From here on out, I will select fish clothes as if my life depends on them.

*****

By 2:00, fore­cast­ed “light winds” have esca­lat­ed to a snarling 27 knots. With the wind comes side­ways rain. The fish stopped bit­ing after a few good tacks; now Joel and I loi­ter in the cabin’s warmth, ignor­ing our emp­ty lines. “This is stu­pid,” he final­ly says. “We’ve had a good trip. Let’s stack ‘em and get going to town.”

The log­i­cal route back to Sit­ka is to run south, around Cape Edge­cumbe and into Sit­ka Sound. But it’s got­ten shit­ty, and we’d be buck­ing right into it. We opt to run up the coast instead, tack­ing an extra 10 miles onto the jour­ney, to duck into Sal­is­bury Sound and dou­ble back down to Sit­ka by way of Neva and Olga Straits’ bliss­ful­ly calm embrace.

The Ner­ka charges along at 6.5 knots as Joel and I fol­low the radio con­ver­sa­tion between the Coast Guard and the Troop­er patrol ves­sel. They’ve combed the entire­ty of Gilmer Bay and the sur­round­ing area. “Have you looked off-shore?” one asks the oth­er. They haven’t yet, but will run five miles out and begin tack­ing up.

If he went off-shore…. That’s like look­ing for a nee­dle in a haystack.” Joel turns to me. “You know, we’re run­ning this way, any­way. Let’s duck out and keep an eye out.”

I nod. “Sounds good.”

But “keep­ing an eye out” is eas­i­er said than done. With dense cloud cov­er sit­ting heav­i­ly on the water, vis­i­bil­i­ty has dete­ri­o­rat­ed to less than a half-mile. The seas are bat­tle­ship gray, punc­tu­at­ed with white curlers that smack the Nerka’s port hindquar­ter as we angle off-shore. We take a cou­ple nasty rolls, trav­el­ing in the trough. I’m ashamed of my relief when Joel clicks the autopi­lot to the starboard.

He stud­ies the chart on the com­put­er screen. “The heli­copter said they already flew at two miles and didn’t see any­thing. We’re at two miles now, so let’s angle in and run the one-and-a-half mile line up to Salisbury.”

I perch at the star­board win­dows while Joel sur­veys the area to our port, binoc­u­lars snug against his eyes. The glass­es twitch at every pad­dling seabird. We simul­ta­ne­ous­ly gasp at a head bob­bing towards us. It dis­ap­pears under the sur­face, then slow­ly pops up for a clos­er look – a head of bull kelp.

He shakes his head. “Amaz­ing how some­thing like this makes the ocean seem like such a huge, lone­ly place.”

For the next 35 min­utes, we stare into the sea. Loud silence set­tles in the cab­in, until Joel breaks it. “Can you imag­ine what that guy must be going through? Bob­bing around in this weath­er, no idea where he is or if anyone’ll find him…”

I don’t voice my ter­ri­ble thought: I don’t expect he’s going through any­thing any­more. Adrift in these con­di­tions all night and all day, no sur­vival suit, total­ly depen­dent on a plas­tic tote that may or may not still be afloat?

Moments lat­er, Joel says what I didn’t. “If they haven’t found him by now… I think that guy’s a goner.”

Yeah.”

Still we look. Every­one does.

*****

When I leave the win­dow, it feels like kneel­ing to defeat. I cut an apple, slice some cheese. Nei­ther of us is hun­gry. The food sits on the table like an accusation.

THERE!” Joel leaps up from the pilot seat, point­ing out the win­dow with one sud­den­ly shaky hand, yank­ing the throt­tle down with the oth­er. “What’s that?”

Imme­di­ate­ly ahead, six­ty feet to our port, a blue tote wal­lows among the waves like an appari­tion. The open­ing faces away from us, list­ing heav­i­ly to one side. A dread­ful thought pops into my mind. Is a body weigh­ing it down?

Joel fum­bles for the radio mic. “Coast Guard Juneau, this is the Ner­ka. We’ve got a blue tote in front of us. I can’t see any­one in it, but – “

Our shrieks min­gle. “There’s anoth­er one!”

Sev­er­al hun­dred yards ahead bobs a sec­ond sky-blue ves­sel. This one sits upright – and a tiny dark spot peeks out of the top.

He’s in that one!” Words shrill with dis­be­lief. “He’s wav­ing – he’s alive!”

While Joel relays our posi­tion to the Coast Guard, I run up to the bow. The man in the tote stretch­es his arms wide over­head, rais­ing and low­er­ing them with­out pause. I mir­ror his move­ments, wav­ing wild­ly. Holy shit, man – you’re alive!

Adren­a­line makes me fool­ish. I’m scram­bling for buoys, lines, won­der­ing how we’ll pull him out of the water, when Joel sticks his head out of the helm win­dow. “The helo’s already almost here; they’ll pick him up.”

Even as he says the words, the enor­mous thrum of heli­copter blades rever­ber­ates through our bod­ies. Sud­den­ly we’re inside a blender; the waves flare up in dense rotor wash as the heli­copter descends through the heavy cloud ceil­ing and hov­ers above.

We aren’t close enough to shout to the man in the tote. Even if the sea didn’t yawn between us, the wind and heli­copter noise would drown our voic­es. So I stand on the bow and con­tin­ue to wave mad­ly, hop­ing he’ll be able to trans­late the prayer-full thoughts in these fran­tic ges­tures. You made it through, sweet­ie, they’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay, they’ve got you. They’ve got you.

Joel puts the boat back into gear and runs away from the scene, want­i­ng to be out of the way. Then, like good prod­ucts of a youtube/Facebook cul­ture, we stand in the Nerka’s cock­pit and film the res­cue. I hold my breath as the res­cue swim­mer descends into the water – so fast! – and watch him lean into the tote. What does that first moment of phys­i­cal human con­tact feel like, I won­der. Had the man in the tote won­dered if he’d nev­er again feel touch oth­er than the ocean’s assault, the wind and rain’s sting­ing slap? Or had he main­tained hope through the night’s dark­est hours?

Forty-three sec­onds. That’s how quick­ly the Coast Guard has the bas­ket down to the water, the man fas­tened in, and back into the heli­copter. They hoist the res­cue swim­mer back up next, and the helo ris­es. The aban­doned tote shud­ders in the rotor wash.

Joel climbs out of the cock­pit. “Okay… Let’s get going.”

He ducks out of the side­ways rain, back into the warmth of the Nerka’s cab­in, and the engine revs back up to trav­el­ing speed. I stay on deck for a moment longer. Tears I wasn’t aware of min­gle with the rain on my cheeks, and my arms open once more in that wide wind­milling motion. Slow with grat­i­tude now, I wave to the heli­copter, wish­ing again that body lan­guage translated.

You guys are amaz­ing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

*****

At 4:07, the helo pilot calls the Sit­ka Air Sta­tion. “Be advised, we’ve got the sur­vivor on board.” Asked if they’d need med­ical ser­vices on scene upon their arrival, the pilot replies that it’d be a good pre­cau­tion, “but his vitals are good.”

The man in the tote lands in Sit­ka at 4:31 p.m., Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 8.

*****

Why did the F/V Kaitlin Rai go down? The Sit­ka Sen­tinel got the sto­ry.  

Vis­it Alas­ka Way­points to view videos of the res­cue, tak­en from the Nerka’s back deck.

Writ­ten with the great­est joy for both sur­vivors and their fam­i­lies, and heart­felt grat­i­tude and awe for the Sit­ka  & Juneau Coast Guard, Alas­ka State Troop­ers, Sit­ka Moun­tain Res­cue, and all of the indi­vid­u­als who respond as if a stranger in need is a loved one. I’ve nev­er been more thank­ful to be a part of this ocean family.