Injured Sailor Rescued After Week Adrift on Boat : Ordeal: Solo yachtsman, 82, is in good condition after being found unconscious on his 36-foot craft. He had been struck in the head by boom during rough weather.

An elderly sailor en route from San Diego to Hawaii has been rescued after spending a week adrift on his yacht in the Pacific Ocean while drifting in and out of consciousness, authorities said Sunday.

Kirk Lightbourne, 82, of Scottsdale, Ariz. was brought ashore Saturday. He had been found unconscious last Tuesday aboard his 36-foot yacht, Cazador, about 885 miles southwest of San Diego, U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Erin MacDonald said.

Lightbourne, a former Big Band trumpeter who played with the Dorsey Brothers and other acts, was in good condition late Sunday at Sierra Vista Hospital in San Luis Obispo.

“I’m feeling good!” he exulted by telephone from his hospital bed.

Lightbourne, an experienced sailor, left San Diego on Nov. 20, bound for Hilo, Hawaii. He had made the crossing several times before, and this time he was considering going beyond Hawaii to the South Seas, said his son, Michael Lightbourne, 49, of Portland, Ore.

In rough weather on Nov. 27, Kirk Lightbourne was smacked in the head by the boat’s boom. He was hit so hard, his son said, that he fell overboard.

Having taken the precaution of wearing a harness and tether that was attached to a line on the yacht--a standard maneuver for solo sailors--Lightbourne pulled himself back to the yacht and swung himself into the cockpit.

There, his son said, he lost consciousness.

On Dec. 4, the Coast Guard picked up a distress signal from the Cazador. Somehow, Lightbourne managed that day to activate an emergency locater beacon in the cabin below deck, MacDonald said. It remains unclear how or when Lightbourne hauled himself from the cockpit down a steep set of stairs to the cabin, MacDonald said.

The Coast Guard contacted a nearby fishing boat, the Fort Bragg-based Adrienne A, and the next day its crew found Lightbourne “unconscious in the cabin with some blood in his mouth,” MacDonald said.

The fishermen took Lightbourne aboard and the Coast Guard parachuted in four medics, who cared for him until late on Dec. 8, when he was transferred to a Coast Guard cutter.

Lightbourne said Sunday that he remembers nothing of his week adrift, only of regaining consciousness aboard the fishing boat: “I’m looking at the overhead of the Adrienne A and saying, ‘Hey, I’m alive!’ ”

Coast Guard medics told family members that Lightbourne was so dehydrated when he was found that he was “within hours of dying,” his son said.

Lightbourne said he lost 17 pounds. He is due to be released today from the hospital, a nursing supervisor said.

Michael Lightbourne said the crew of the Adrienne A has promised to search the Pacific for Cazador, a white yacht with brown trim. If they find the yacht, he said, they promise to tow it to Hawaii.

“So the next sailing trip will be from Hawaii to San Diego,” Michael Lightbourne said, adding, “Everything else has turned out too good for them not to find it.”