Alaska can be a dangerous place. We have dangerous animals, and the very vastness of the Great Land can be a problem for people unacquainted with it, and even for people who have lived all their lives in it. Sometimes Alaska will just swallow someone up without a trace; one such thing happened right in our neck of the woods last summer, when an older man who had lived in the area all his life just vanished; we still don’t know what happened to him.
Fishing in Alaskan ocean waters can also be dangerous. (Someone really ought to do a TV show about such things.) The sea will try to kill you, and sometimes it succeeds.
And sometimes, people survive. A young Alaskan man is back home after spending several days crouching on the top of an overturned skiff, surrounded by 10-degree water. He’s home safe now, but sadly, the skiff’s other passengers weren’t as lucky.
The video, a little more than two minutes, shows the dramatic rescue of a 15-year-old boy from Savoonga who had been fishing for halibut along with his cousin and brother when their small skiff overturned near St. Lawrence Island.
The teen can be seen kneeling on an overturned skiff in extremely frigid water.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s remarkable and it’s cold. The water is 10 degrees Celsius,” said Adam White, the captain of the Northwest Explorer, in an interview Wednesday with Alaska’s News Source.
The U.S. Coast Guard began searching for the boat after Alaska State Troopers notified them around 8:30 p.m. Sunday that the party was overdue. The boat was last seen Friday departing Savoonga and had been scheduled to return to St. Lawrence Island by about 3 a.m. Sunday.
The Coast Guard spotted the teenager around 10:30 a.m. Monday and asked the Northwest Explorer and its crew of 13 to pick him up.
Here’s a video of the rescue.
“Through the teeth chattering, he had mentioned that his brother was still under the skiff and then he said that in the previous night before our rescue that his cousin had slipped away off the top of the skiff,” White recalled.
Family members told Alaska’s News Source the teen tried to hold onto the boat after the other two drowned.
His mother said that her youngest son was the only survivor, and that he held on for days without food or water. She said his older brother, who was the boat’s captain, died after becoming stuck under the boat. She said the third crew member, a cousin, survived for a day alongside her younger son before he, too, died.
“Saturday, all the way to Tuesday, that kid was on top of that skiff,” White said.
“I mean, that’s one tough kid.”
That’s a tough kid indeed, and he will have a heck of a cautionary tale to tell his kids and grandkids. And, thanks to his tenacity, he should live to have kids and grandkids.
Alaska Man score: Five moose nuggets. Brave kid, and a tough kid.
And, yeah, summer’s well and truly over. The summer Alaska Railroad has ceased normal summer scheduling as of Labor Day weekend’s end.
The Alaska Railroad’s daily summer routes wrap up this weekend, with the last day of daily service set for Sunday.
Meghan Clemens with the Alaska Railroad said many travelers have stepped foot on the Alaska Railroad this summer.
“It’s been a busy summer for the Alaska Railroad. It hasn’t been record-breaking for ridership, but like many in the travel industry, we saw a big dip during the COVID years, a strong comeback and this summer has been a continued strong performance,” Clemens said.
That’s good news. We like tourists; they contribute a great deal to the Great Land’s economy. In the traditional Memorial Day-Labor Day summer travel season, we encounter people not just from all over the USA, but all over the world.
One of our backhanded brags, of course, remains that “for most people, Alaska is a once or twice-in-a-lifetime vacation. We live here.”
Alaska Man score: Five rental RVs.
Now, let’s take a look back at last Friday, which was the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
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