{"id":3846,"date":"2012-09-13T02:38:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T05:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bwsailing.com\/news\/?p=860"},"modified":"2012-09-13T02:38:03","modified_gmt":"2012-09-13T05:38:03","slug":"dramatic-rescue-at-sea-after-26-hour-ordeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/dramatic-rescue-at-sea-after-26-hour-ordeal\/","title":{"rendered":"Dramatic Rescue at Sea After 26 Hour Ordeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A fisherman who spent a night adrift in a 4-by-4 foot plastic fish bin after his boat sank off Alaska says he gave himself pep talks and sang \u201cRudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer\u201d and \u201cRow, Row, Row Your Boat\u201d to keep his spirits up.<\/p>\n

His fellow crewmember managed to get into a survival suit and washed ashore on a beach after his own night afloat.<\/p>\n

A Coast Guard helicopter hoisted Ryan Harris, 19, of Sitka, from his plastic \u201clifeboat\u201d on Saturday, more than 24 hours after the boat sank on Friday, the Daily Sitka Sentinel reported Monday.<\/p>\n

Two hours before Harris\u2019 rescue, crewmate Stonie \u201cMac\u201d Huffman of Sitka was rescued from a beach about 25 miles northwest of Sitka. Harris told the newspaper he\u2019s happy both he and his buddy survived after their 28-foot aluminum boat got hit by big waves and overturned.<\/p>\n

They were dumped into the water before they could send a mayday. The search for them started after friends reported them overdue Friday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s truly a miracle they survived,\u201d said Sitka Mountain Rescue Director Don Kluting, who helped in the search.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought I was going to die, but I was worried about Mac,\u201d Harris told the newspaper Monday. \u201cI\u2019m glad to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Weather Channel Meteorologist Paul Goodloe notes that \u201cWith water temperatures around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, your core will rapidly cool down and unconsciousness will occur within one to two hours. With no survival suit the human body can\u2019t survive in water that cold and death is sure to take place within six hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two men were fishing for coho salmon about two miles off Cape Edgecumbe when the hydraulics failed on their boat. They fixed that problem, but decided to head back to port.<\/p>\n

Then they encountered waves, one of which tipped the boat onto its side.<\/p>\n

Two survival suits were on board, but neither man was wearing one when the boat went down. After the boat capsized, the two men climbed onto the upturned hull.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had no radio, no cell phones,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n

Huffman later found a survival suit that floated from the wreckage.<\/p>\n

The two managed to grab some empty fish totes that had washed loose. Huffman stabilized one while Harris climbed inside. The men weren\u2019t able to get Huffman into a bin but he took a plastic bin lid for flotation. Eight-foot waves soon separated the men.<\/p>\n

The Coast Guard said that Huffman told them the lid drifted away during the two hours that he struggled to get into the survival suit.<\/p>\n

At one point, Harris said, his bin dumped him and he struck his head, but he was able to get in and keep it balanced for the remainder of the 26 hours until his rescue.<\/p>\n

The toughest part was not knowing the fate of his friend, Harris said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gave myself a pep talk,\u201d he said. He kept repeating for four hours: \u201cI\u2019m Ryan Hunter Harris and I\u2019m not going to die here.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his sleepless night, he sang songs to keep up his spirits.<\/p>\n

The Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter early Saturday and three others later that day. Alaska State Troopers and Sitka Mountain Rescue sent four boats out searching, Kluting said.<\/p>\n

The troopers found Huffman, an experienced fisherman in his mid-40s, who had reached the beach at Point Amelia about an hour before troopers spotted him waving on the shore.<\/p>\n

Harris suffered blistered hands from clutching the bin and a cut above his eye from where his \u201clifeboat\u201d struck him, but he declared Monday that he was \u201calmost 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courtesy of www.weather.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fisherman who spent a night adrift in a 4-by-4 foot plastic fish bin after his boat sank off Alaska says he gave himself pep talks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruising-news","category-news-and-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}