The Wreck of the La Conte

A tale of terror and survival in the Gulf of Alaska

January 30, 1998, Fairweather Grounds, Alaska, 80 miles offshore

It was rough work setting out the big string. They had five miles of longline to bait hook by hook before letting it slip into the building seas. The swells made it hard for the crew to hold their footing, even inside the bait shed. David Hanlon did not look good. His face had gone as pale as scraped bone. At times he dropped the line he was working on and ran outside to be sick.

Now the waves came arching over the bow rail, thudding on the deck with a hard, white burst and leaving a broth that froze their legs up to their thighs. In the larger swells the fantail lifted clear of the water and they heard the unsettling screech of the driveshaft and felt the breath-stopping emptiness of sudden weightlessness. Each second they spent weightless was a second lost for setting gear, but they managed to get the entire main line out.

Once it was out the skipper, Mark Morley, said to his deckhand, Gig Mork, "Okay, let that sucker fish for an hour but no longer."

"All right."

"I'm whipped. Take the helm for me."

They looped around the line, circling the orange marker buoys, riding in the belly of 18-foot swells. Mork would point the La Conte's nose into the oncoming waves, then swing the boat around and follow the seas. Hanlon didn't leave the bait shed except to be sick, and Bob Doyle and Mike DeCapua took care of clearing the decks and lashing down the pallets and buckets. Every so often Doyle felt his gaze drawn to the ocean building around them.

After a miserable stretch of fishing that hadn't even paid for their bait and fuel, the five-man crew of the La Conte, a leaky 79-year-old wooden schooner, had taken one last run to the Fairweather Grounds. Morley, a novice skipper who was 11 days shy of his 36th birthday, knew bad weather was coming. But he also knew fish could be found on the shoals, and his instincts proved right. For 18 hours their long-lines had a fish on every hook: yellow-eye, lingcod, calico, halibut, even sand shark. It was an incredible haul, one that would bring a big profit in port.

More was at stake than money, though. This catch was a chance for these five men to turn their troubled lives around. Morley and his 41-year-old line coiler, DeCapua, were ex-cons; Doyle, 39, drummed out of the Coast Guard for heavy drinking after losing his wife and children to a fellow Coastie, hadn't seen a paycheck in three months; Mork, 39, was a big drinker on land--more so, people said, after his brother's suicide; and Hanlon, 47, a quiet Tlingit fisherman with a bad back and few prospects, was fighting to stay sober and get even with his medical bills.

And now, just as they finished setting their longest string of hooks, a storm was coming.

•

Around two P.M. the skipper came down to the foredeck to man the winch. He shouted to DeCapua through the shrieking wind, "Storm's coming fast."

DeCapua shouted back, "No kidding."

Just then a terrific wave rose off the bow. It towered over the rail like a huge oak, hanging there for a second, then fell forward in a roar that made the deck roll under their knees. Morley crumpled under it, and for the longest moment Doyle lost sight of him. Then he saw the skipper's burly back lifting through the foamy water.

Doyle sloshed his way over to the skipper and steadied him by the elbow.

"You okay?"

Morley could only nod, pull off his glasses and wipe the brine from his eyes.

Rushing, they hauled up the last 10 lines without a hitch and brought on several hundred more pounds of yellow-eye. Now hail was mixing with sheets of rain, the wind slinging it all into their faces.

When DeCapua had wrapped up his last line he took a moment to look out over the port rail. The barrels of the waves were big enough to swallow a house. What startled him, though, was the dark line stretching along the length of the western horizon.

"Skipper!" DeCapua stumbled over to Morley and grabbed his arm. "Hey!" Morley, who was sweeping fish into the holds, did not look up.

"We got to get out of here," DeCapua shouted. He pointed to the horizon. The black line was now twice as thick. "Man, in Alaska, if you see a line like that out there you get the fuck off the water."

Morley leaned over and grabbed a yellow-eye by the gills.

"Hey!" DeCapua snapped. "Listen to me. I ain't shitting you. That line is going to be on us in an hour."

They left the catch out on the foredeck, dogged down the aft hatches and secured the fuel jugs, lockboxes, gaffs and batteries. They shined a flash into the bilges. The water was six inches below the base of the engine. Even with the two bilge pumps and the backup-generator pump running at full tilt, it took more than 10 minutes to clear it.

•

By six P.M. the seas were twice as high as the ship. They rose in huge dark walls now, their faces nearly vertical. The boat was no longer clearing the tops of the swells; it was punching through the crests and launching out their far sides. The lights dimmed and then quit. The computer went blank. Yellow emergency lights flickered on.

"Shit," Mork said. "The fucking laptop's out." He turned to Doyle. "We're not getting any juice. Go down below and find out what's doing it."

In the galley DeCapua was putting on his rain gear.

"C'mon," Doyle said. "The computer just went out. Gig thinks it's the generator."

"Glorious."

They timed the waves battering the hull, broke from behind the door and, heads bent and legs plunging, dashed to the stern. They knelt beside the hatch, and DeCapua yanked it open. Doyle took one step down the ladder and froze.

"Oh God."

The bottom step of the ladder was underwater, along with the generator pump and both bilge pumps. Water was rolling back and forth across the engine room.

"Mama mia," DeCapua said.

"Get the skipper," Doyle said, his voice cracking.

Morley came running along the side of the boat. He threw himself down on the rolling deck. He'd been on the radio putting out a Mayday while the others formed a bucket brigade. Doyle looked up.

"Any luck?"

"Who knows?" Morley answered. "I couldn't hear anybody." He lowered his voice. "I did set off the EPIRB, though."

"Which one?"

They had two emergency position-indicating radio beacons: One was a 406-megahertz model, the other a 121.5. The 121.5 sat in a holster in the wheelhouse, attached to a 50-foot line; the 406 was handheld and emitted a stronger, more precise satellite signal. Both had a manual switch and a saltwater trigger.

"The 121."

"What did you do with the 406?"

"Right here." Morley pulled it out of his rain jacket. It was the size and shape of a bowling pin.

Belowdeck the La Conte was filling fast with water. Each time it keeled and the water rolled in its belly, the ship lost more of its center of gravity.

Doyle bailed and bailed until he could feel his joints crack. The engine went on thrumming. This boat isn't quitting easy, Doyle thought. He was taking an empty bucket from DeCapua when he heard a sickening, gurgling gag.

He wheeled around and gazed at the engine.

"Holy Mary."

"Fuck me," DeCapua said.

They could only stand there, the two of them. The boat's heartbeat had stopped. The engine was dead. All they heard now was the maddening high-pitched moan of wind in the rigging outside.

•

After putting on their survival suits the five men regrouped on the foredeck. Morley had given the 406 beacon to Hanlon. The ship was lurching, listing so hard to starboard that at times the mast dipped into the waves.

"Dave," DeCapua shouted, "where's that fucking line?" Hanlon held up a roll of three-quarter-inch nylon rope he'd grabbed from the bait shed.

Doyle leaned close to Morley and said, "Trigger that other EPIRB."

At once a powerful white flash from the 406 blinded them.

Doyle climbed the steel ladder to the top of the pilothouse to get some buoys to help them float in the water. The La Conte had no life raft, he knew, though by law it should have had one. The ship was rolling and twisting under the combers as though in agony but refusing to go under. She's some boat, Doyle thought to himself. But she won't last much longer--10 minutes, if that.

He saw the 121.5 still flashing in its holster inside the pilothouse. "I'm going to get that other EPIRB!" he shouted. "Get everyone tied together."

He climbed the ladder, threw open the side door, grabbed the beacon and slid back down to the deck. The others were passing the rope, tying it around their waist and handing it off to the next man. Hanlon was on one end; Doyle got on the other.

"Okay, listen up!" the skipper shouted. "We jump when I tell you guys to jump. Where's that 121?"

Just as Doyle raised the beacon, a cable snapped overhead and cracked on the deck not five feet behind him. He whirled, and as he did a wave surged over the bow and swept the EPIRB out of his hands and clean over the gunwale.

"Oh shit! I lost it! I lost the EPIRB!"

With only one beacon now they lined up, crouching, backs to the sea, and held fast to the rail. Half the deck was underwater.

Doyle looked over at the pilothouse. The emergency lights were still on. He turned and saw Hanlon clutching the remaining EPIRB to his chest, his eyes shut.

"Listen!" Morley shouted, holding his hands cupped. "As soon as I say go, we all go in together."

Doyle looked over his shoulder. The ocean was so dark he could not tell the difference between a wave crest and a trough.

"Everybody ready?"

They could fall 15 feet or 100.

"One!"

They could jump in front of a breaking wave and be smashed against the hull.

"Two!"

The ship was tipping, starting to roll.

"Now!"

Into the abyss they leaped.

•

At first all Doyle felt was the cold. It was a vicious cold that had already begun deadening his toes, working its way up into his calves and setting in under his knees, a cold that numbed his spine and tightened on his temples like a vise. He felt wrapped in darkness, twirling, falling without end. Then he felt a heavy weight on his chest, and it occurred to him that he might drown. He began kicking his legs and fighting the water in a heavy-footed panic. Where in God's name am I? It horrified him to think he could be swimming toward the bottom of the ocean. Something was tugging sharply at his neck. It tugged and tugged, and soon he could not fight it anymore. In that instant he burst through the surface.

He knew it because of the noise. There was a high, moaning shriek all around, and through that noise a thundering, avalanche sound. He threw his eyes open; they burned from salt. He tried to breathe; saltwater flooded his mouth. He coughed, hacked, gagged.

Then he was under again.

Once more there were only the muffled sounds of bubbles and water being thrashed. It felt so calm and pleasant--except for the hot pain in his lungs--and then he popped back into the world of shrieking blackness.

He heard Morley's voice, faint but clear.

"Sound off! Hey, sound off! Dave?"

"Here!"

"Mike?"

"Here!"

"Gig?"

"Here!"

"Bob?"

Doyle tried to shout, but his voice was not very loud: "I'm here! I'm here!"

A wave threw them together. He kept his eyes open for more than a second and, in the blinding flash of the strobe, saw Morley's face--contorted, lips quivering, skin a bluish white. His glasses were gone; his eyes, like those of a frightened child, were wide and staring.

"Bob," Morley said, "how's my zipper?"

Doyle took hold of Morley by the shoulder and patted his chest until he found the metal tab. He felt the skipper shaking.

"Your zipper's up."

"Shit," Morley said, "then my suit is ripped. I feel water getting in."

"Where?"

"In my legs," Morley said. "My right leg. I can feel water getting in. God, it's cold."

Spray like buckshot whipped Doyle's face. They went back down and came up again.

"Sound off!" It was the skipper's voice. "Bob? Bob!"

"Here!"

He felt weight on his shoulder and turned to see Morley clinging to him.

Morley asked, "When will the Coast Guard be here, Bob?"

They probably aren't coming, thought Doyle. But he told Morley, "They'll send somebody for us."

"When?"

"Within the hour."

The seas would not stop jumping up and down. Sometimes a wave would break on top of them. Other times they would reach the crest and then go skidding and tumbling down the back side of the swell into a cauldron of spray and foam.

"Bob!"

Morley had been dragging behind and swallowing water. Doyle spun, grabbed the skipper by the waist and lifted him onto his chest. He put a hand over Morley's mouth to shield it from the flying sleet and spray.

"Breathe," he said. "That's the way. Good. I'm here, Mark. I'm here."

Morley coughed and hacked.

"You all right?" Doyle asked.

"I'm cold, man. I'm so cold. Are the Coasties coming, Bob?"

"Sure," Doyle told him. "On their way."

"I'm so cold."

"How are your legs?"

"Heavy. I can hardly feel them."

So, Doyle said to himself, it's already started. And how long have we been in the water? Ten minutes? He put his arm around Morley's broad back, pulled him up a bit and leaned at an angle so that they floated together.

"Bob?"

"Yeah?"

"I hope those Coasties get here soon."

•

At that moment, 3,000 miles away, outside Washington, D.C., a computer inside the U.S. Mission Control Center was downloading an EPIRB signal from a Cospas-Sarsat satellite. It was an urgent distress signal from the Gulf of Alaska, latitude 58°15.5' north, longitude 138°07.8' west. Automatically the computer relayed the data to the station closest to the emergency--the 17th Coast Guard District headquarters, in Juneau, Alaska.

It was 7:02 P.M. on a Friday, and Lieutenant Steve Rutz was sitting at his desk at the Rescue Coordination Center when he heard the (continued on page 82)La Conte(continued from page 72) zipping noise of the SARSAT-dedicated printer coming from the control room.

He ripped off the bulletin and scanned it. No ID on the ship. He checked the coordinates: Fairweather Grounds. He checked the printer again. Nothing more.

The National Weather Service was reporting 20-foot seas and 35-knot winds across the Gulf of Alaska. If people were in the water, their chances weren't good. Water temperatures in the gulf were about 38 degrees. In water that cold, a 200-pound man in a survival suit has an 83 percent chance of lasting two and a half hours. After that his chances of survival plummet, especially if wave heights are over 25 feet. The higher the seas, the faster a person burns body fat and the less time it takes for hypothermia to set in.

At 7:13 P.M. Rutz issued an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast. Ships were asked to keep a sharp lookout for distress, and any ships that had accidentally tripped an EPIRB were to radio the Coast Guard immediately. Three minutes passed, then five, then 10. There was no response. Rutz reached for the phone and dialed Air Station Sitka, the Coast Guard's emergency number.

•

At eight P.M. the Coast Guard launched its first H-60 Jayhawk helicopter, Rescue 6018, into hurricane-force winds, driving snow, hail and the most perilous seas an arctic tempest can whip up. The chopper soon lost radio contact with the air station, but it pounded onward through the storm until it got to the scene. Against 110-mile-an-hour winds and downdrafts, Lieutenant Bill Adickes, the co-pilot who had taken the controls, tried to stabilize the helicopter while swells crested 20 feet below. His flight mechanic dropped flares and tried to deploy the rescue basket into the crashing waves, but the 40-pound cage was blown straight back toward the tail rotor. The men watched in horror, knowing that if it hit the spinning blade the Jayhawk would fall into the water and sink in seconds.

•

Lieutenant Adickes was trying to keep a hover of 80 feet above the waves. The last three flares were dropped in an arc around the survivors.

On the fifth drop the basket landed no more than 15 feet from the survivors' strobe. It floated on the surface for more than a minute.

"Why aren't they swimming to the basket?" asked Rich Sansone, the rescue swimmer. He shouted out the cabin door, "Swim! Swim!"

Just then another gust rammed the aircraft and sent it hurtling backward.

"Twenty-five feet from the water!" Sansone shouted. "Altitude!"

Adickes pulled full power and the Jayhawk snapped skyward. It shot up to 125 feet before Sansone said, "Too close."

After a minute Adickes dropped the helicopter back down. He checked his radar altimeter--70 feet. Not too bad, he thought. But where are the goddamn flares?

He peered out the windscreen.

The flares couldn't have gone out, he thought. What the hell's going on?

In the water the survivors saw exactly what was going on: Bobbing alongside the flare, riding the crest of a rogue wave that was looming over the helicopter, they were gazing down in horror at the Jayhawk's rotor blades spinning below them.

In the helicopter the rescue swimmer and the flight mechanic were screaming:

"Up! Up! Up!"

"Do something!"

The sea stood over them. It looked like a wall. This wave had no curling crest, just a thin, silvery sheen. It made not a whisper as it moved swiftly and stealthily toward them.

There was a rush of air, and the sea collapsed just below the belly of the Jayhawk. Spray and foam entered the cabin with the force of a power hose, but the helicopter wobbled upward.

"Goddamn it!" Sansone shrieked. "That wave missed us by five fucking feet!"

In the raging sea below, the survivors were fighting to breathe. The wind peeled their eyelids, and the saltwater seared their throats. It was coming so hard at them that they could not keep the water out of their stomachs, and every few minutes one or another of them would retch it back up.

They bobbed in a circle. The nylon rope still held them together, but the lifeline was coming loose around their waists. When they came to within arm's length of one another, they reached and clung fast. When they came apart, they thrashed madly, calling out to one another between gasps.

After a curler drove them down for half a minute Doyle broke the surface and shouted, "Where's Dave? Dave!"

They called out Hanlon's name but got no response. It was like trying to shout over a passing train during a downpour. Five yards away, glinting in the flash of the EPIRB, which had been passed to Mork, bobbed an orange buoy--the buoy that had been attached to Hanlon's waist. The guy has to be attached to it, Doyle thought.

They watched the buoy come closer, then swing away, then come closer again.

"Dave, is that you?"

A wave crashed over them. The buoy was still in sight. But even as Doyle kicked and thrashed to get to it, the buoy kept sliding farther and farther away.

Soon it was out of sight.

•

A second Jayhawk, Rescue 6029, took off for the Fairweather Grounds at 9:34 p.m. By then the survivors had been in the water for two and a half hours. Once at the scene the 6029 made more than a dozen hoist attempts. The helicopter kept pitching so wildly, though, that dropping the basket near the survivors was like lowering a clothespin into a milk bottle from atop a 10-story building. After three hours and 15 minutes in the air, with no fuel to spare for their return flight to Sitka and with winds battering them even harder, this rescue crew was also forced to abandon the survivors. Before midnight a third Jayhawk, 6011, was pulled onto the runway and preparing to launch.

•

In the cockpit of Rescue 6011, pilot Steve Torpey was listening over the high-frequency radio to Bill Adickes, in the 6018, describe the on-scene conditions. "Steve," Adickes said, "it's like nothing you've ever seen before."

Adickes was returning across Sitka Sound, and the radio transmission was sharp. "The seas are bad, real bad," he said. "Seventy-foot waves with rogues. Watch out for the rogues."

"Right."

"Don't even think about hovering or hoisting from any lower than a hundred feet. Watch for downdrafts. They drove us down right in front of big waves. And the winds are extreme. They hit you from all sides."

"Okay," Torpey said.

Captain Ted LeFeuvre, Torpey's co-pilot, was listening to the conversation through his headset. The roughness in Adickes's voice unsettled him.

"What else can you tell us?" Torpey asked.

"Take lots of flares, as many as you can. Get them into the water fast. You'll (continued on page 146)La Conte(continued from page 82) need them for reference. Otherwise you won't see the water. You won't see anything. It's all black out there. No light. No light at all."

•

They were on the scene at 12:52 A.M., in complete darkness.

They roared directly over the fly-to position that had been radioed to them as the second Jayhawk flew back to Sitka. They were warned not to expect the survivors to be there, since the drift was so strong. But they had to start looking somewhere.

Torpey steadied the aircraft, and the Jayhawk's nose was pointed squarely into the wind. They had been pushed seven miles off the fly-to position by 110-mile-an-hour winds.

"What's our air speed?"

"Eighty-two knots."

"What's our ground speed?"

"Three knots."

"Jesus."

It felt as though they were riding a roller coaster, with rushes and sudden swoops and plunges, and each time the helicopter dropped sharply LeFeuvre felt a hollowing-out sensation in the pit of his stomach. Torpey pushed the engines to 145 knots, and they began moving forward over the ocean at a speed of 25 knots.

LeFeuvre thought of the air rushing at them as a kind of river, so wide that if he were in a canoe he would not be able to make out either shoreline from the middle. Torpey instructed Fred Kalt and Lee Honnold, the two crew members in the cabin behind him, to begin to prepare for hoisting.

"Lee," Kalt said, "start handing me those glow sticks. And let's get the caps off a couple of flares."

LeFeuvre glanced back and saw Kalt and Honnold tying chemical lights to the rescue basket. It was like something from a sci-fi movie: the silhouettes of two kneeling, helmeted figures hunched over a shiny metal cage, bathed in an eerie green glow.

Torpey said, "I'm going to descend to 150 feet."

"Roger that."

Until then they had snatched only glimpses of the waves. But now as they descended, LeFeuvre could see the ocean heaving, splitting and pulling apart in craters. So that's why the beacon signal keeps coming in and out, he thought. The waves were blocking the signal each time the EPIRB skidded into a trough or got swamped by a wave. Those seas must be huge, LeFeuvre said to himself.

The helicopter was bouncing off gusts but crabbing forward ever so slowly. LeFeuvre was squinting and scanning the blackness, hoping for a glint or a flash or anything that would give them something to home in on.

In the beam of the handheld searchlight the sea looked as though it was boiling. At times they could make out a wave below and aft, and sometimes they could see a wave before the nose of the Jayhawk. But sometimes they saw nothing at all. There was no pattern.

For several minutes Kalt crouched on the lip of the jump door, the sleet rattling on his visor, the roar of wind and turbines in his helmet.

Then he looked up at Honnold and said in a flat, emotionless voice, "I see them."

•

The strobe slid beneath the helicopter. Around it, glinting in the searchlight, Honnold saw a gaggle of reflective tape. There could be two survivors, he thought. There could be five.

Like a lineman sending a football through his legs for a field-goal attempt, Kalt snapped one, two, three Mark 25 flares between his legs and out the door.

"Flares away!"

He spun around and leaned outside. Down below, the flares shot red-white flames across the black water.

"Flares are in the water. Flares ignited."

In the pilot's seat Torpey saw none of this. Sleet blanketed his windscreen, and everything--the horizon, the sky, the water--had whited out.

As he eased up on the controls to position the helicopter over the survivors, a gust threw the nose of the craft up 30 degrees. The helicopter plummeted toward the water. In the co-pilot's seat LeFeuvre had no time to read their rate of descent; he had only enough time to react, to pull on the collective stick, which controlled the chopper's altitude.

The radar altimeter was unwinding fast.

We're backing down, he thought, the floor of the helicopter seeming to drop out from under him as it went down, down, faster and faster in a backward, plunging rush. Then came the screams.

"Up!"

"Altitude!"

"Emergency up!"

That was when LeFeuvre saw the wave through his windscreen.

It was all black except for the white line along the top, and it was closing and building with a petrifying smoothness of motion. When it was within 50 yards and LeFeuvre saw the flares embedded in the wave, spinning and shining silvery in the bright white light, he squeezed the collective stick harder, his eyes locked on the smoothly approaching darkness.

"Up!"

"Up! Up!"

The radar altimeter read 40 feet. Seconds passed.

The altimeter still read 40.

This can't be, LeFeuvre said to himself. I'm pulling this helicopter up at full power. We should be going straight up.

Then it hit him: They were going straight up. But below them the wave was rising at the same speed.

Well, Lord, LeFeuvre said to himself, I am going to meet you now. But do I have to go out being cold and wet?

At that instant the helicopter lurched skyward. The rogue wave broke just beneath it.

•

By the time LeFeuvre arrested their ascent, the Jayhawk had climbed to 600 feet above the ocean and sailed a mile downwind of the survivors. It took the crew another 10 minutes to get back to the scene.

The Mark 25 flares were still visible, upwind of the strobe light.

"Okay, guys," Torpey said over the intercom. "Get those smokes ready. And this time, Fred, don't use any of those small flares. From now on all that go in the water are the big ones, the Mark 58s. Got that?"

"Roger."

Torpey went back to work. His movements are as crisp as they were at takeoff, LeFeuvre thought. They dumped seven Mark 58s.

"That was good," Torpey said. "Okay, let's complete part two of the rescue checklist. We're going to do a basket hoist."

Honnold unhooked the rescue basket from the cargo straps and set it on deck. Kalt slid over to the winch. LeFeuvre flipped two toggle switches on the console above his head, supplying power to the hoist."

"Fred," Torpey said to Kalt.

"Sir?"

"Get ready to work with me now," Torpey told him, "because you're going to see some pretty big changes in the way I fly this thing."

The rescue basket was now swinging like a pendulum beneath the helicopter. Kalt just watched it swing and swing and swing until finally a wave smacked it into a trough and buried it under a cascade of water.

"Is it in?"

"It's in."

"Basket's in the water!"

Kneeling, the sweat running down his back, Kalt watched the green glow of the chemical sticks fade as the basket settled under the waves.

He cleared his visor of sleet and looked down. The basket had resurfaced. The green glow was only about five yards from the flashing strobe.

"Why aren't they climbing into it?" Honnold asked. He was lying spread-eagle on the deck, shining the handheld searchlight on the survivors.

"Shit," Honnold said. He was breathing heavily. "It's right there. It's right there in front of them."

"It's sinking below the surface," Kalt told him. "They can't see it." He was thinking he had never really seen waves before.

Kalt threw the winch in reverse. They had been hoisting for more than 40 minutes. The first few drops had been almost laughable, but with the next 10 tries Kalt was dragging the basket to within five yards of the survivors.

While they got the basket ready again Torpey worked as hard as he ever had in any helicopter. He was doing 30-degree-angle banks, lifting the helicopter's nose up, throwing it down, wrenching it hard right, left, then left again, then hard down, up, right, left, back, all to compensate for the gusts. He was also suffering from what pilots call helmet fire. The inside of Torpey's helmet was soaked with so much sweat he had turned on the cockpit's air-conditioning.

Relax, he was saying to himself. Just take it easy. In the cabin, rescue swimmer Mike Fish held new flares, and Honnold cut the bindings. They pulled the cylinders out of the canisters and handed them to Kalt, who turned the tabs to arm them and then laid them out on the deck, perpendicular to the door.

The helicopter took an uppercut from a gust and the flares hopped around the cabin.

"Okay," Torpey said, "prepare to deploy flares. Okay. Drop! Drop! Drop!"

"Flares have ignited," he said in the deadpan voice that had intensified only slightly since they departed Sitka.

"Captain LeFeuvre," he heard Fish say, "watch our altitude, sir. We're now at 72 feet."

"Thanks, Mike." LeFeuvre pulled gently on the collective. "Taking us back up."

At times LeFeuvre could see tremendous streaks of foam being ripped off the wave crests and slung in long white lassos, and he noticed that Torpey was using those foamy streaks as references, angling the helicopter to keep the wind planing off the aircraft's nose. Then everything would go blindingly white again and he would have only the radar altimeter to focus on.

Over the intercom he could hear Kalt mutter, "Uh-oh." The flight mechanic had just pitched the rescue basket out the jump door again.

"Mr. Torpey?" Kalt said.

"What?"

"The basket is sailing from side to side." Kalt was hanging halfway out the door. They could hear his mouthpiece picking up the wind's howl. "The basket is flapping in all this wind. It's sailing aft at 45 degrees."

"What can I do?" asked Torpey.

Kalt pulled himself into the cabin. "Let me get it in and try again." He threw the winch in reverse. "Go forward and right," he said.

They tried turning the helicopter a bit to create a lee, but that didn't work either. Over and over Kalt threw the basket out, hoping the gusts would stop, trying to time it so the wind would not fling the cage into the tail rotor. But on the rare occasions that the basket did hit the water it bounced and twirled from crest to trough, appearing and disappearing in the foam-laced swells.

Torpey was really laying into the controls now, no longer banking 20 or 25 degrees but routinely inclining the helicopter at a 40- to 45-degree angle.

It began to make a difference. Torpey and Kalt found a rhythm, and soon the conning commands were not as dramatic: Kalt spoke almost softly, like a surgeon, talking his pilot through the maneuvers as calmly as if they were setting down on a deserted beach--telling him to go 50 feet this way, 30 feet that way, 20 feet aft, 15 forward, until they were consistently within a tightening area. The helicopter was still heaving, pitching wildly in the wind, but it was no longer sailing all over the sky.

Down in the churning sea the basket was bobbing within 10 yards of the survivors.

"I've got the basket near the survivors," Kalt said in the same emotionless tone. "Paying out slack.... Okay, Lee, hold it.... That's it, hold!"

Torpey laughed.

"Hold? In this?"

"Hold!"

Kalt could see only blurry shapes in a circle. Then one of the shapes broke from the others. He saw the flash of reflective tape. "Someone's swimming toward the basket!"

Grabbing the hoist cable now, feeling the heavy tautness of the steel fibers sliding through the fingers and palm of his leather hoisting glove, he waited for a tug in the line.

Then, "I think I got somebody! Yes! We got one in the basket! Taking a load!"

•

Roughly 100 feet below where Kalt was kneeling, Doyle was shouting to Morley, "Mark, I'm cutting you free of the rope now!"

"Just get me close! Just get me close! I'll get in the thing, I swear it!"

"Okay, Mark. Take it easy. I'll get you there. You're the first one up, okay?"

"Where? Where?"

"It's close by. Close. See what I told you? You're going to see your kid."

Once Doyle had heard the distant throbbing turn to a whining roar and had seen the spotlight, he felt a hopeful, singing feeling around his heart. Then the helicopter was overhead, much lower than the first two, and shoots of bright white light were bursting around them, casting shadows and lighting the waves green again; then he saw the glint of the hoist cable in the coned light of the belly floods.

Then the helicopter went hurtling downwind.

Doyle had watched it go shooting away until it was almost out of sight. Then he saw it wobbling up from the horizon, growing bigger and brighter, and then he saw the shine of flare casings tumbling through the sky and more bursts of the red-white light not far off. The basket was moving closer, all the time closer, and he was thinking, God, bring it to me. I'll grab it and I won't let it go, I swear. And then, mopping his eyes, he spotted the glowing green rescue basket no farther away than the length of two swimming pools.

Doyle yanked his suit zipper down to his waist and, feeling the icy shock on his chest, pulled out his fishing knife.

"Mark," he said, "I'll get you into the basket. Two people can fit in that basket. When we get to it, you grab it. You hang on. Even if I can't get in."

"I gotta get in it."

He cut the rope around Morley's waist. "I want you to swim as hard as you can." He severed his own line. "I'll be holding you." He let the knife go. "Giggy, I'm taking Mark up!"

"Go!"

Reaching his arm over the skipper's back, Doyle started kicking and thrashing. Every muscle felt rigid. Needles of pain shot through them. He swam hard. It didn't seem as though he was moving.

Ahead the green glow was rising and falling in the blackness.

"Move!"

His legs felt like lead. The glowing box was coming straight at him. He swam as hard as he could. The swells were lifting him up and down, but the glow was brighter and brighter. He felt a sharp pain in his skull.

Doyle grabbed the metal cage with his free, left hand and steadied it.

"Mark, get in!"

He tried to heave Morley into the basket. He got behind him and pushed.

No good.

"Christ!" he screamed at Morley. "Help me!"

Get into the basket yourself and pull him into it, Doyle said to himself. "Here," he shouted into Morley's face. He grabbed the heavy arms and draped them over the top of the wired basket. "That's it. Now hold on to the cable."

Doyle swung around in the water, grabbed the opposite side of the basket and hoisted himself up and in so that his knees pressed off the bottom of the cage.

"Come on!"

On his knees, his hands grabbing Morley's, he pulled with everything he had.

"Come on!"

Again he struck back hard against the great weight.

"Get in here!"

Just then he felt a heavy jerk.

•

As soon as LeFeuvre heard Kalt shout that a man was in the basket, he pulled full power on the collective. The helicopter shot skyward. Kalt, catapulted backward, peeled himself off the back wall and staggered to the door.

Below, the basket crashed through a comber and, spinning and shedding foam, punched through the far side of the wave.

"Holy crap!" Kalt shouted. "The survivor's still in the basket!"

The winch was taking cable onto the reel in sweeps as fast as the reel could turn.

"Basket's halfway up!"

The cage, tiny at first but growing steadily in size, pitched and spun, engulfed in curling curtains of sleet and snow.

"Basket's 20 feet below the cabin!"

Up, up, up it came until it swayed just outside the jump door.

"Basket's outside the cabin door!"

Kalt reached for it. The basket swung away from him.

"Bringing the basket in!"

This time he grabbed the metal cage and pulled. It didn't budge. He pulled again.

Stuck.

"Bringing the basket in!"

He yanked harder.

"Attempting to bring the basket in," he said, grunting. "It, ah, it ... the basket won't come in the door."

Kalt was now crouching at the door, shouting to Honnold, "Pull, Lee, pull!"

Both men were leaning back, pulling with all the strength in their cramping muscles.

"Are you pulling?"

"I'm pulling! I'm pulling!"

"It's not coming in!"

Fish, in his seat, monitoring altitude and working the high-frequency radio, looked up. Through an opening between Kalt's right leg and the jump door, he saw why the basket would not enter.

A second man was dangling from it.

Each time Kalt and Honnold tried to yank the basket, the dangling man's arms and head rammed against the lip of the jump door.

"Fred!" Fish shouted to Kalt. "Someone's hanging on the basket!"

"I can't see him!" Kalt shouted.

The man was inches below Kalt's boots, barely clinging to the bottom of the basket. He lifted his head, looked into the cabin and locked eyes with Fish.

For a second. Just one second.

Time enough for everything to pause in Fish's mind, for the whining sleet and the groaning turbines to hush.

Time enough for one man's eyes to scream for mercy, for another's to scream in horror.

•

Not a minute earlier the basket had been 80 feet below the helicopter, bouncing like a yo-yo in the wind and the whirling thick snow and sleet.

"We're getting there!" the man on his knees inside the rescue basket was screaming. 'Just hang on!"

The man dangling from the bottom of the basket yelled back, "Hang on to me!"

"I got you!"

"Don't let me go!"

"I said I got you!"

The man kneeling inside the basket, Bob Doyle, had his hands under the armpits of the dangling man, Mark Morley, and he was saying to himself, We're going to be okay now. The sea can't get us anymore. We're out of it. We're out of it.

The basket kept spinning, twirling, shedding spray.

"We're almost there!"

"I can't hang on anymore!"

"Give it what you can!"

"I can't!"

"Don't let go!"

"Please don't drop me! Please don't drop me!"

They were now in the belly lights of the helicopter. They were 15 feet below the jump door, and as they climbed Doyle saw, from the corner of his eye, helmets and shoulders hanging out the side of the helicopter.

"Don't drop me!"

Just then a gust slammed into them. The basket rocked and whirled. Doyle's hands no longer had his skipper by the armpits; they had slid down Morley's arms and were fastened to his wrists.

"Hang on!"

Morley's hands, which had been clutching the basket, were sliding now.

"Don't let go!"

Doyle lunged with one hand and grabbed his skipper's collar. Leaning back, knees digging into the wire mesh of the basket bottom, he swung his other hand around and seized Morley's shoulder. Then he leaned back.

"Bob!"

"I got you!"

The upper half of the basket was now above the deck of the helicopter cabin.

"We're here!" Doyle screamed hoarsely at the shapes in the doorway. He looked down.

"Hang on, Mark! We're here!"

"I can't!"

The basket lurched.

"Hey!"

Two pairs of gloved hands were now yanking at the basket frame. Doyle tried to shout, but the groaning roar of the turbines and the whining sleet swallowed his screams.

"No, wait!"

Another lurch. This time he saw it: the head of the dangling skipper rammed against a steel rail beneath the door frame. Again the basket lurched. Again Doyle heard the dull, sickening thud of Morley's head against the airframe. This time Morley lifted his head.

He turned it a little to the left, then turned back and looked straight up and locked eyes with the man in the basket above him.

His friend.

"No!" Doyle was shrieking. "Oh please, Mark, don't...."

And then Mark Morley allowed the wind to take him in any direction that it wished.

•

The man in the basket was hysterical, gesturing, blubbering. Honnold was trying to calm him down.

"What the hell's wrong with this guy?" Honnold said. "He's going frickin' nuts."

Kalt didn't hear him. In all the confusion the intercom cord plugged into his helmet had come loose. He picked it up from the deck and plugged it back into his helmet.

"What's the matter?"

"There was someone hanging on the basket."

"Are you sure?"

"He just fell."

"The skipper," the rescued man shrieked. Tears streaked his reddened cheeks. "The skipper just fell. Oh God, I let him go! I let him go!"

In the cockpit LeFeuvre was working the collective and watching the radar altimeter. He could not help hearing their talk. But he had not taken his eyes off the console or the seas, not even when he heard the commotion over the fallen survivor. He wondered how it must be to fall through darkness and not know when you would hit the water.

The basket was already going down again. It splashed in a trough between two enormous waves, 10 yards from the survivors.

Below the helicopter, floating spread-eagle and facedown, was a man in a survival suit. He did not appear to be moving.

Better go for the ones who look as though they're conscious, Kalt said to himself. Get moving. He and Torpey understood each other perfectly now. He had to call only two or three conning commands to establish a hover position over the strobe.

They were 15 minutes into the hoist evolution when LeFeuvre noticed the warning light flashing on the fuel gauge. "We don't have enough gas to get back to Sitka," he said.

Torpey did not answer him. He was banking the helicopter and fighting to hold a position. "I'll figure it out."

After a brief conversation with a C-130 airplane circling high above the scene, LeFeuvre turned to Torpey.

"Listen, from here Yakutat is about 15 minutes, which means we've got enough fuel to stay safely for another hour and 40 minutes."

"Are you sure?"

"I just double-checked my figures...."

"Captain," Torpey said, pointing, "watch that wave there!"

LeFeuvre hit the collective, heard the turbines whine and felt the sudden, hollowing-out, thrusting jump of the helicopter in his stomach. A comber--80 feet at least--swept beneath them. Torpey exhaled.

"Okay," he said. "We stay longer."

Below them the wave buried the basket for almost a minute. But Kalt did not stop dragging it until it was within 10 yards of the strobe light. "Paying out slack," he said.

LeFeuvre was dropping their altitude when he heard Kalt shout, "Survivor's in the basket!"

Just then a gust buffeted the helicopter.

Honnold, Fish and Kalt were shouting. The hoist was screeching. Kalt struggled to the winch and found it in the stop position. The cable was jerking, and more than 80 feet of hoist cable was still out.

"I'm pulling it up," Kalt shouted to Honnold. He shoved the hoist in gear and with one hand on the grab rail leaned halfway out the helicopter. The hoist was still spooling smoothly.

Then--wham--the helicopter was over on one side, and Kalt was skidding on the deck. He struggled to his knees, checked his helmet. He was all right. Kalt stood up and crouched. Lousy, bitching gusts, he said to himself. He looked down at the raging sleet beneath the helicopter, the flakes long and as white as chalk.

"Hey," Kalt said. He sounded as though he could hardly believe what he was saying. "Someone's still in the basket."

•

"Move your ass!"

"I am."

"I said move it!"

"I am moving!"

"You want me to leave you behind?"

"No!"

"Then swim, you fuck!"

Ahead, Mork and DeCapua could see the green glow of the chemical lights appearing and vanishing behind the swells. Otherwise the spray and sleet were so thick they could hardly pick out the waves.

"Swim!" Mork shouted.

"I can't!"

Mork was holding DeCapua with one arm and flailing and swimming with the other, and it was as though they were moving uphill and downhill, not sideways, through the breakers. Mork looked up, and the green box was coming closer. He thrashed and fought through the water, the spray clawing at his eyes, and he kept thrashing and swimming. Everything was turning black and his throat was filling with ice water when he felt the hoist basket in his grip.

"Hold this!"

While DeCapua steadied the bobbing cage, Mork grabbed the crossbar and hoisted himself into the basket.

"Get in!"

The basket slipped right out of DeCapua's hands, and he fell backward. The EPIRB was gone.

Mork had him by the legs. "I got you!"

Just then a wave toppled on them like a wall of bricks, and the next thing Mork knew he had one leg out of the basket, one foot on top of the cage and his hand barely holding the cable. The basket was twirling like a top, scudding foam and spray as it twirled, and he knew he was going up. He was going up fast, and all he knew was the flying ice and black and the cable, and all he could do was squeeze the cable with his death grip. Don't let go of this thing, he said to himself.

The first thing he saw was the door and then a huge man wearing a shiny black helmet. Then a big glove reached out and seized the cage, a second glove was seizing him by the shoulder, and he was inside the cabin.

He was lying on the deck alongside two black boots. He coughed out seawater and rolled over on his back. His knees and elbows hurt.

Only then did Mork realize that he had come up in the basket alone.

•

The basket was going down again. Kalt looked out at the churning sea and saw a splash. "Basket's in the water," he said.

LeFeuvre was keeping a close eye on the gas gauge. They had less than 40 minutes of fuel left, enough for another four, perhaps five basket drops. No more. After that there would be nothing to do but leave whoever was down there to the grace of God.

Down in the sea DeCapua was just about out of his head. He had not been able to feel anything in his hands and legs for some time, and his feet, as far as he could tell, were as good as gone. He could hear the helicopter, the dull thudding of the rotors mostly, but he had lost sight of it. Some of the flares were still burning. He could see them when a big swell lifted him above the other waves. But he knew that soon all the flares would go dark, and he remembered he no longer had the EPIRB.

I'm tired, he said to himself. Whipped. I wonder if it would do any harm to sleep. Just close my eyes and slip right off the edge. I wonder if this is what Hanlon was feeling when he went under? Or was he hot? They say some guys get real warm at the end. Nice and toasty.

DeCapua was about to curl up into a ball when he saw the rescue basket.

At first he thought it was a mirage, a hallucination. It was all lit up, a bright, starry green, sparkling like a Christmas tree. Then he remembered the glow sticks. That's the real thing. That's a rescue basket.

Jesus.

And he was moving toward it. He did not understand how. His feet were not working. His hands were not working. It did not feel as though he was swimming. Yet he and the basket were getting closer and closer, and everything--the waves and the wind and the snow and sleet and spray--went calm around him, and there was a big pause, sort of like a missed breath, like a rest in music, and he was happy and not asking questions, just saying, "Thank you, thank you," and the next thing he knew he was inside the basket and breaking free of the water and something was whispering to him, "This is your miracle."

DeCapua was clear of the water and rising toward heaven and feeling relief, the lightest, wildest, most unearthly, immense spasm of relief he had ever felt, and then he was in the helicopter and someone was tugging on his legs.

"That's the last one," he heard a voice say.

His head flopped to one side onto the deck. He saw someone in a survival suit, then a knife. Someone was leaning over him with a knife.

"Please," DeCapua said, trying to shake his head, "use the zipper. Don't cut my suit."

The knife was doing something, and then it went away. Hands were tugging on the shoulders of his suit.

"I ... I can't ... can't get up."

"Lie still."

He was shaking so hard that everything in the cabin looked blurry.

"How are you feeling?"

"Cold," he said. "So cold...."

"I see that," the voice said. "You were in the water too long. Don't you know you shouldn't be swimming this time of year?" Then DeCapua felt something plastic around him. "That's it. How does that feel, in a capsule?"

"Not bad."

"Can I get you anything?"

"Cigarette?"

"Well," the voice said, "that won't happen for a while."

DeCapua closed his eyes. The shakes were coming worse now. They felt good. He could feel a little spot on the small of his back warming.

He turned his head.

"Where's Mark?" he asked.

•

Around 3:30 A.M. on January 31, 1998 Rescue 6011 set down in Yakutat, Alaska with three survivors of the La Conte disaster. At daybreak two C-130 airplanes and an H-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Kodiak took off for the Fairweather Grounds to search for Mark Morley and David Hanlon. Two Coast Guard cutters steamed out to assist. At 1:55 in the afternoon an object that looked like a man in an orange survival suit was spotted by the crew of the oil tanker Arco Juneau. It was the body of the skipper, Morley. The Coast Guard searched for Hanlon for 94 straight hours. His remains, however, were not found until more than six months later, by two teenage boys hunting deer on Shuyak Island, roughly 400 miles from the Fairweather Grounds.

On April 2, 1998 four of the airmen from Rescue 6011--Ted LeFeuvre, Steve Torpey, Fred Kalt and Lee Honnold--received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the highest aviation honor given during peacetime. Mike Fish, the team's rescue swimmer, was awarded the Coast Guard's Air Medal. The crews of the other two rescue helicopters received commendation medals, achievement medals and letters of commendation.

Tamara Westcott, the skipper's fiancée, had her last name legally changed to Morley and gave birth to a son on August 13, 1998--the same day Hanlon's remains were discovered on Shuyak. She named the boy Mark. She lives in Sitka with her son and her teenage daughter, Kyla.

The three surviving fishermen recovered from hypothermia, and Mike DeCapua and Gig Mork continue to fish the Alaska seas. Bob Doyle moved back to his hometown of Bellows Falls, Vermont, where he began working a series of odd jobs. He now lives with his younger sister in North Walpole, New Hampshire. To this day he keeps a snapshot of Mark Morley in his wallet.

This article is adapted from The Last Run, ©2004 by Todd Lewan, to be published by HarperCollins.

Anatomy of a Rescue Five Men, Three Choppers, Seven Hours lost in a Raging Sea

1 7:02 P.M., Friday, January 30: An urgent distress signal is relayed by Cospas-Sarsat satellite to Juneau, Alaska. Location: latitude 58°15.5' north, longitude 138°07.8' west. Around that time all five crewmen of the La Conte are forced to ditch their sinking ship in 38-degree water.

2 8 P.M.: Rescue 6018, a Coast Guard H-60 Jayhawk helicopter, heads 150 miles offshore into 110 mph winds, snow, hail and whiteout conditions. After a dozen basket drops and low on fuel, it is forced to turn back. At 9:34 a second chopper, Rescue 6029, takes off. The survivors have been in the freezing water two and a half hours.

3 12:49 A.M., Saturday, January 31: Rescue 6029 is forced to bail; the survivors have been in the water nearly six hours, and one man is now lost. Tossed about in icy 70-foot seas with rogue waves, they watch the second chopper peel away into the storm.

4 12:52 A.M.: The third chopper, Rescue 6011, arrives on the scene to find rogue waves over 100 feet high, killer downdrafts, snow and hail. The extreme weather threatens the helicopter crew, but the pilots stabilize the aircraft and begin the rescue. Within an hour the first survivor is in the rescue basket.

Drown Another Day

What to do (and not to do) to survive if you're Pitched into the Drink

Troubled Water

Your car skids off a bridge and plunges into water. The doors won't budge because the water pressure holds them shut.

+ Lifeline "There is a myth that you should wait, breathing from an air pocket, until the vehicle is submerged and the pressure on the doors has equalized," says Nancy Rigg, a drowning-prevention consultant. "This may prove fatal, since most cars sink engine-first." So get out while the car is still floating. Fortunately, electric windows sometimes work in water. Use them. If they don't work, lie across the front seats and kick out the side window.

Ice Escape

You fall through a frozen lake, you're losing body heat, and you're having a tough time lifting yourself out of the frigid water.

+ Lifeline "The first thing you should do is cover your mouth to avoid aspirating water when you involuntarily gasp from the cold," explains Gerald Dworkin, an aquatic-safety consultant with Lifesaving Resources. Resist the impulse to kick off your heavy wet pants--even soaked, they insulate you. Reach into your pocket and grab your keys. Use them to grip the ice as you gently propel yourself with your legs.

Hope Floats

Your boat capsizes or sinks. Even if you can see land, hypothermia and exhaustion will likely set in before you can swim to it.

+ Lifeline "Your best bet is to stay with the boat. A lot of times you get fatalities when people try to swim to safety," says David Johnson, of California's Department of Boating and Waterways. Instead find some debris from the wreck you can use as a flotation device. Then form hugging circles to share body heat with others.

The Flying Game

You are in an airplane when it starts hurtling toward the sea. It hits the water--and you're not in an exit row.

Lifeline "Do not use pillows or blankets to brace yourself," says Paul Take-moto of the FAA. Stay put and count to five, allowing the cabin to equalize. Then pull rather than swim your way out. The thrashing motion of swimming will just get you tangled up in belts and oxygen tubes.

Riding the crest of a rogue wave, they gazed down in horror at the copter's rotor blades below them.

Now as they descended, LeFeuvre could see the ocean heaving, splitting and pulling apart in craters.