Five fishermen whose wave-battered vessel went down fast in a sudden squall in Southeast Alaska early Friday abandoned ship but were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.

One of the crew members injured his back when he fell climbing into a skiff and was airlifted to Ketchikan for treatment. The crewman was delivered to authorities there with relatively minor injuries, said skipper Vaughn Skinna, reached by phone in Klawock Friday evening.

The rest of the crew of the 58-foot Seafarer, a purse seiner based out of Klawock, were safely rescued after they radioed for help and abandoned ship into the skiff.

Skinna, 42, said the herring vessel was near Clarence Strait, heading to Thorne Bay, when a short-lived squall broke out and waves began pummelling its bow. It only took a few hits before the Seafarer, a family-owned vessel, began filling with water and started going down, he said.

"It just started taking on water really heavy in the engine," Skinna said. "It was flipped on its side. It was capsized. ... God spared us, simple as that. We were in a bad way."

Crew members tried to save the ship, bailing water from its flooded engine room, while Skinna shot out two Mayday calls, he said.

The Coast Guard picked up a call at 12:51 a.m. and dispatched an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Sitka, as well as a 47-foot life boat and 25-foot response boat from Ketchikan. It also diverted the cutter Naushon to the scene.

After the chopper arrived and found the crew safe on the skiff, it waited until just before 3 a.m., when the life boat reached the scene, Petty Officer Sara Francis said.

The injured crewman was taken aboard that vessel, then lifted into the Jayhawk, which flew him to Ketchikan for treatment, she said. The others remained on the skiff and were towed to Thorne Bay by the life boat, Francis said.

According to the Coast Guard, the crew's use of an electronic locator beacon and a flashlight helped speed the rescue.

"The fact that they had (the beacon) and a flashlight made locating them much easier," Lt. Cmdr. Eric Carter, Jayhawk commander, said in a prepared statement. "The (beacon) didn't give us an exact position but the use of the flashlight led us right to them using our night vision goggles."

The Seafarer, however, was long gone. Francis said it was lost in about 1,500 feet of water some seven miles north of Thorne Bay.

"The vessel did sink just off Narrow Point in about 250 fathoms of water," Francis said. "It's deep enough that we cannot salvage it."

The vessel, which did not have any catch aboard, contained only about 400 gallons of diesel, she said. The fuel would break up fairly quickly and wasn't a significant danger to the environment, she said.

The cause of the sinking remained under investigation.

Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.

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