Anchorage Daily News

As the Coast Guard helicopter flew through darkness toward the doomed fishing boat in the Bering Sea, all that could be seen of the 203-foot Alaska Ranger were flashing lights on the ocean.

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Undated photo of Eric Peter Jacobsen, captain of the Alaskan Ranger. Jacobsen is one of the victims in the sinking of the catcher-processor vessel 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor on Sunday.

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"It looked like a poorly, poorly lit airstrip," said Coast Guard rescue swimmer O'Brien Hollow.

Each strobe was at least one person who needed to be rescued from the icy waters.

"It was a textbook worse-case scenario," said Lt. Steve Bonn, 39, who piloted the chopper. "There were people just floating everywhere."

During the next four hours early on Easter morning, two Coast Guard helicopter crews plucked 22 people out of the ocean 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor, and a nearby ship rescued and recovered another 25. Four men, including the fishing boat's captain and his top men, died, and another man was lost at sea.

What caused the sinking is still under investigation.

The first Mayday call from the boat, which had been on its way to mackerel fishing grounds, came just before 3 a.m. About an hour and a half later, in his last communication with rescuers, ship's captain Peter Jacobsen, 65, said seven people were still on board, the boat was listing on its side, and it was going to capsize at any moment.

The first helicopter to arrive was an HH-60 Jayhawk, with Hollow, Bonn and two others as crew. As they approached, driving snow and rain and 30 mph winds sharply reduced visibility, Bonn said. Pounding waves crested to 20 feet, sometimes 30 feet.

Bobbing in one square mile of the Bering Sea were the 47 fishermen who abandoned the sinking factory-trawler, owned by Seattle-based Fishing Company of Alaska. All were wearing survival suits. Some were on three life rafts deployed from the fishing boat; most were in the water, fighting the waves. Netting, orange buoys and big blue plastic crates used to store fish floated among the debris.

Hollow was immediately lowered into the choppy, 35-degree water. He wore a mask, snorkel and fins.

The waves were so high and came so fast, it was difficult to see over the next crest.

The helicopter went from one fisherman to the next. The chopper hovered, trying to maintain a steady 50-foot clearance above the roiling sea as it hoisted the men. Sometimes moonglow helped rescuers spot them. Sometimes the helicopter's lights were used.

Other times, when glare from the blowing snow made the chopper's lights a blinding disadvantage, they were shut off and the crew relied on night vision goggles.

"I could see them waving frantically at us," Bonn said.

When Hollow would reach one, he'd say: "You're doing great. I'm going to get you out of here."

Their eyes would light up and they'd reach out to him. "You expect people to be petrified, but they were smiling," Hollow said.

One man told Hollow, "But I was just promoted to line supervisor."

Even though they may have been in the water for more than a couple of hours, the first 11 people recovered were in good spirits, Bonn said. In the back of the Jawhawk, "they were kind of cheering and yelling and obviously very happy to be out of the water. They were high-fiving each other," he said.

"They just kept thanking us over and over again," said flight mechanic Robert Debolt, 28.

To make room for more men, the Jawhawk crew tossed non-critical equipment into the ocean, including a life raft.

Six were found with their arms linked together in a human chain. Hollow asked each one how he was doing, and each answered "great" or "fine" until the last, a man with quiet, dull eyes who couldn't answer at all.

"OK, you're going first," Hollow told him.

Conditions were getting worse. It took 45 minutes to fill the chopper with 13 cold, soaked fishermen who were growing more hypothermic by the minute.

"They were a little less oriented but still alive and able to move," Bonn said.

The crew thought about trying to land on a nearby fishing vessel, the Alaska Warrior, but discarded the idea. The complicated rigging on board and the rough seas made it impossible to offload people safely onto the ice-covered ship, Bonn said.

"There was too much danger in trying. We were much more likely to injure people or damage the helicopter and end the entire rescue," he said.

Instead, the chopper flew to the Coast Guard cutter Munro, more than a half hour away. The added time made things more dangerous for dozens of fishermen still in the ocean.

"It was difficult to come to the decision," Bonn said.

The Jayhawk was crowded, steamy with the breath of the crew and 13 rescued fishermen. It was important to keep them awake. When Hollow would see a man start to drift off, maybe in the later stages of hypothermia, he'd punch him in the chest.

By the time they reached the cutter, three of the fishermen could not walk. CPR was performed on one man for 45 minutes before he was declared dead, said the Munro's captain, Craig Lloyd.

Hollow said one of the survivors told him he'd kept thinking about a movie, "The Guardian," in which actor Kevin Costner portrays a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. He said, "I knew you guys were going to get here."

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.