Anchorage Daily News

Ron Martindale was working his job in the North Slope oil fields when he received the gut-wrenching call.

A commercial fishing boat was missing in remote waters along the Aleutian Islands -- the one carrying his 22-year-old stepson as a crewman.

It was Jake Gilman's very first voyage as a commercial fisherman.

And his last.

Gilman was among five men whose bodies were fished from the rough and frigid sea after the Wednesday disappearance of the Katmai, a 93-foot cod boat that sank in Amchitka Pass, about 100 miles west of Adak.

Rescuers plucked four survivors from a life raft, and the search continues for two more crewmen still missing.

Martindale, who works for Abbottsfield Industrial Training Inc. on the Slope, was in Anchorage on Friday to tend to his stepson, and to talk with U.S. Coast Guard investigators.

He said young Gilman left their home in Camas, Wash., in late September to go fishing aboard the Katmai. He'd applied for the fishing job after seeing an ad somewhere.

"He was a greenhorn. This was his first trip out," Martindale said.

The reaction at home wasn't so positive when Gilman, an athletic and outdoorsy type, announced he'd taken the job.

"I had apprehensions, and his mother was extremely mad at him for doing it," Martindale said. "But he was a free spirit and he wanted to do things his way, and we generally let him."

Martindale said he hadn't communicated with his stepson since his departure. His eyes welling with tears, he said he regrets their last conversation.

"I was mad at him," Martindale said. Not about the fishing job. Something else. Anyway, he said, "That's really the hardest thing."

Now, he plans to take his son's body back home to Camas.

Martindale thanked the rescuers braving high winds and mean seas to search for Katmai survivors. And he had a special thought for the families waiting for word on the fate of the two crewmen still missing.

"I know what they're going through right now," he said.

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

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