Alaska Beat

AK Beat: Coast Guard suspends search for missing boater in Southeast Alaska

Coast Guard suspends search for missing Southeast boater: The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search for 52-year-old Paul Keithahn believed to be missing in the area of Coghlan Island near Auke Bay in Southeast Alaska. Multiple Coast Guard assets, Juneau-based canine search and rescue teams from SEADOGS, and Alaska State Troopers searched 190-square miles for 32 hours before suspending the search. "The decision to suspend our active search efforts is always difficult," said Cmdr. Marc Burd, chief of response, Coast Guard Sector Juneau, in a news release. "Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family members of Mr. Keithahn." Passers-by spotted Keithahn's pleasure craft "Spellbound" turning in circles near the island on Monday afternoon, said Petty Officer 1st Class Shawn Eggert. The boat was reportedly unmanned, he said. A response boat and auxiliary vessel from the Coast Guard's Station Juneau, as well as an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Air Station Sitka began searching for Keithahn after receiving the report from the good Samaritans. The search efforts continued through Tuesday, but the Coast Guard called it quits after searchers failed to turn up any leads. The Juneau Empire reports that Keithahn was born and raised in Juneau and has three siblings and a teenage daughter.

Latest Senate ad spat is over snowmachine riding: A new TV ad from GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan features X Games snowmachiner Cory Davis poking fun at a previous ad from Sullivan's Democratic opponent, incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Begich. The Begich ad, from April, depicts him driving a snowmachine across the Arctic Ocean. "I know something about snowmachines," Davis says in the new Sullivan ad, which was released Wednesday. "That's why I had a good laugh when I saw Mark Begich pretending to ride one." A spokesman for Begich's campaign told the Wall Street Journal that Davis's claim was a conspiracy theory, and sent the newspaper footage from the first moon landing. In an interview with the website Politico, Begich said the ad should be pulled down, and told a reporter that he'd frostbitten his ear while shooting the commercial. "Yes, it was me on the snowmachine," he told Politico. "Look at the picture of me when I take my helmet off. That's what we call helmet hair. That's when you're riding a snowmachine." Asked if the Sullivan campaign had any evidence that Begich was pretending to ride a snowmachine in his ad, a spokesman for Sullivan, Mike Anderson, said: "I think the ad speaks for itself."

Perennial statewide candidate Vondersaar dead at 64: Homer resident and perennial longshot candidate for Alaska political offices Frank Vondersaar died Friday at Alaska Regional Hospital, according to a report from the Homer Tribune. Vondersaar was a mainstay on ballots, running for Alaska seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives 11 times, according to the Tribune. Most recently he received 9,132 votes -- just shy of 15 percent of the vote -- in the Democratic primary for the Congressional seat held by Republican Don Young (Forrest Dunbar won the primary). The Tribune remembered Vondersaar -- a lawyer and engineer -- as an anti-corruption crusader and a prolific writer of letters to the editor. Vondersaar was 64.

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