ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The captain of a commercial fishing boat that sank last week in remote Aleutian waters says he and other crewmen spent a terrifying night trying to cling to a wave-pummeled life raft.
The 11-man crew was forced to abandon the 93-foot vessel Katmai after it lost steering, flooded and rolled over in rough seas west of Adak on Oct. 22, said Henry Blake of Massachusetts.
That began a desperate fight for survival, Blake told federal investigators during a hearing Monday in Anchorage.
Blake said he and six others made it into a life raft, which itself was filled with water as waves pounded against it, and the men tried to secure a sheltering canopy in the wind gusts.
“And then a big one came,” he said, a monster wave that overturned the raft and dumped the men — all wearing survival suits — into the frigid water.
When they regrouped, three of them had disappeared.
“Josh was gone; Cedric was gone,” said Blake, pausing as emotion gripped his throat.
In the ensuing hours, before a U.S. Coast Guard rescue helicopter found them the next day and hoisted them to safety, waves flipped the raft over and over again — 20, 30, maybe even 50 times, Blake said.
Only Blake and three others survived the sinking.
