2 O.C. Men Saved With Others After Sinking Off Alaska

Two Orange County men were among eight people rescued Wednesday off the southern Kenai Peninsula in Alaska after their fishing boat sank in 40-degree waters.

Other than mild effects from hypothermia, Bob Dubois, an airplane pilot from Mission Viejo, and his brother John, also a county resident, apparently suffered no serious injuries after spending 45 minutes in a life raft, Coast Guard officials said. The other six people--all but one of them from California--also were treated for mild hypothermia and released.

“They were all lucky,” said Petty Officer Keith Alholm of the Coast Guard office in Kodiak, noting how cold the waters can be.

It was about 9 a.m. Wednesday. They had all heard it, a horrible creaking thunk from below, said the captain, John Ferrell of Santa Monica. The 37-foot boat was just making a second pass over an area where the passengers were fishing for halibut about 32 miles south of Homer.

Suddenly the boat was leaking, gallons by the minute, from several spots in the hull. There was fire in the cabin. Nothing worked, not the radio, not the global positioning system; it was as if something had cast an evil spell on the vessel, Ferrell said.

The cause of the sinking remains a mystery, he said.

A cellular phone owned by John Dubois ultimately saved them: “We are sinking. We are going in the water. Help,” Dubois repeated into the phone until the Coast Guard arrived in a plane and a helicopter from Kodiak.

The boat was sinking fast. The six tourists and a deckhand had crowded onto an inflatable raft built for three. When the captain tried to make his way onto the raft, that too started to sink, so he retreated back into the cold water, eventually finding his way to the bow of his boat a few feet above the water’s surface. He rested there for about 45 minutes, thinking he would die.

“If I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go like this. With my boat . . . and salt in my eyes,” said Ferrell, 46 years old and a 30-year veteran of the sea. The boat was worth about $250,000.

If not for the raft, all of them likely would be dead, Coast Guard officials said; in waters that cold, the body can give out in as few as 15 minutes.

Bob Dubois even managed to videotape the entire sinking and rescue while sitting waist-deep in the chilly water, his brother told the Anchorage Daily News. “He’s doing this narration the whole time,” John Dubois said. “I was freezing, but I was laughing.”

Several of the passengers returned home to California on Thursday. Not the Dubois brothers--they were unavailable Thursday to discuss the accident, being out on the water on another fishing trip.

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Saved at Sea

Two Orange County men were among those rescued Wednesday when their fishing boat sank off Homer, Alaska.