"katmai" News

Officials at the National Transportation Safety Board say the Alaska Ranger apparently lost its rudder, then flooded and went down. The March 2008 sinking killed five of the 47 crew members.

The U.S. Coast Guard helped rescue three out-of-state rafters who got stranded in Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve.

When Corey Eisenbarth was describing his 1983 rescue from the Bering Sea on the "Deadliest Catch" show this season he didn't think one of the people watching would be the Coast Guard captain that helped save his life. On Sunday, the two met for the first time.

The Coast Guard board investigating the sinking of a fishing vessel in the Bering Sea reconvened in Tuesday in Seattle. The board met at the Divers Institute of Technology to test the buoyancy of a life raft from the Katmai to determine if it inflated properly.

Several more witnesses have testified in Seattle before a Coast Guard hearing into the Oct. 22 sinking of the fishing vessel Katmai off Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Seven of the 11 crew members were lost.

The question of safety on board the Seattle-based fishing boat that sank into the Bering Sea was under heavy scrutiny on Monday as the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation continued its probe into the demise of the Katmai.

Josh Leonguerrero was on his first fishing trip in Alaska when the Katmai sank, killing him and six others. At his funeral on Friday, those who loved the young man struggled to let hm go even though they knew he had died while chasing after his dream.

A marine board investigating the sinking of a fishing vessel says a mayday call was recorded at the Coast Guard station in Kodiak but not heard.

Harold "Ryan" Appling and Guy Schroder, shipmates from the vessel Katmai, spoke before the Marine Board of Investigation in Anchorage. The men recounted details of working on the 93-foot, Kodiak-based vessel that sank in a severe storm Oct. 22.

Capt. Henry Blake testified Monday about how the ship lost steering and then the engine room began to take on water. He and six others made it to a life raft, and fought the waves all night. "And then a big one came," he said.

The Coast Guard suspended its search Sunday for two crewmembers in the deadly sinking of a fishing vessel that took on water in stormy seas last week near the Aleutian Islands.

Hearings into the fatal sinking of a fishing boat near Alaska's Aleutian Islands are scheduled to begin Monday in Anchorage by the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigations.

Josh Leonguerrero was on his first fishing trip in Alaska when his boat sank, killing him and four of his crew members. But his family says he was a lifelong fisherman, happiest when he was fishing. "He wanted to do it for the longest time," his mother said.

"(They) said 'thank God you're here. Thank God you're here,"' said a Coast Guard swimmer who first reached the four survivors of a fishing boat that sank in the Aleutian Island chain on Wednesday. "He said that it was the hardest 17 hours of his life," said a survivor's brother.