Sunken boat lost to strong currents

"To be perfectly honest, we don't know where it is," Coast Guard Petty Officer Sara Francis said.

Searchers with sonar scanned the icy, high-current waters around the Granite Point platform for hours Friday but failed to locate the sunken boat.

As a result, the Coast Guard is broadcasting VHF warnings to mariners to be on the lookout for a runaway craft.

At 166 feet long, the supply boat Monarch is a big and dangerous hunk of steel.

Cook Inlet's swift tidal currents could be rolling the boat around the Inlet bottom -- or closer to the surface if it's holding air pockets.

Searchers don't believe the boat has traveled very far from the platform where it sank, but they really don't know for sure, Francis said.

The Monarch's seven-member crew was forced to abandon ship after drifting ice pinned the vessel to the legs of the Granite Point platform. Chevron Corp. runs the platform near the village of Tyonek.

The underside of the Monarch's bow remained above water until late Thursday morning before the boat disappeared under the water, Francis said.

The crew of a tug that rushed to the scene was unable to tie a tow line or marker buoy to the boat before it went down, she said.

Responders spent the rest of Thursday making plans to salvage the boat, then broke for the night.

Friday morning, however, searchers equipped with sonar on the Coast Guard cutter Hickory and another offshore supply boat, the Champion, couldn't find the Monarch, Francis said. They plan to resume the search at first light today.

The Coast Guard and the Monarch's owner, Ocean Marine Services Inc. of Kirkland, Wash., hope to raise and salvage the boat once it's located.

One clue that could help searchers could be fuel sheens on the water's surface. The Monarch carried up to 38,000 gallons of diesel.

The Monarch's crewmen, who made it off the sinking boat without serious injury, have submitted to standard drug and alcohol tests, Francis said.

Just what caused the boat to get into trouble and sink remains under investigation, she said.

Find Wesley Loy's commercial fishing blog online at adn.com/highliner or call 257-4590.