ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Tom Alexander usually stood 25 feet above the water line as he steered his 60-foot yacht in Gulf of Alaska waters between Kodiak Island and Whittier.
But by the time he abandoned his sinking vessel Sunday, he only had to step a foot down into cold seawater. He rolled from the water into a life raft, he said, and his mind was finally at ease.
"At that time I knew everybody was going to live," Alexander said Tuesday.
In what the Coast Guard described as a near-perfect rescue, Alexander and his passengers were able to signal their location 85 miles north of Kodiak, don immersion suits, escape into the raft and fire a flare that led a helicopter to their location. Alexander, his 14-year-old stepson, Jacob, and friends Brian Broderick, Charles Baylock and James Sims were hoisted to safety and flown to Kodiak.
Alexander, an Anchorage real estate agent, kept the Nordic Mistress in Kodiak in winter and in Whittier in summer. The trip Sunday was planned to move the boat to Whittier, about 40 miles south of Anchorage. Alexander estimates he has made the trip 30 times, including 15 in the doomed vessel.
The group flew to Kodiak on Thursday, and after final maintenance on the boat, including changes of filters and checks of fittings, they received a weather forecast of 15-knot winds and 6-foot waves. They planned a Sunday morning departure.
Before leaving, Alexander said, he conducted a safety meeting on Saturday night. The passengers tried on immersions suits, reviewed how to call for help and give coordinates if something happened to Alexander, and checked out how to launch the life raft.
"I think that safety briefing that we had the night before made a huge difference," Alexander said. "A few of those guys had never seen a survival suit in their life, much less knew how to get it on."
On Sunday, they found the weather a bit worse than predicted — 20-25-knot winds and waves up to 12 feet — leading to a bumpy ride.
"The water wasn't fun, but it wasn't life-threatening," he said.
Sometime after 10 a.m., however, something in the engine room "cut loose."
"We starting taking in water," he said.
The first hint of a problem came with the stoppage of an inverter, a device that converts power from a 20-volt system to a 110-volt system to operate a navigation and other devices. One engine started to fluctuate. Alexander sent Broderick, whom he calls his "first mate," to check on the engines. Water was coming in fast.
He guesses the water came through a fitting or a failed coupler.
"There was so much water in there, we couldn't find the source," he said.
Alexander got on the radio and made a mayday call, relaying a description of the boat, the position and the number on board.
"I knew then that this boat was going to sink," he said.
He handed the wheel to Broderick and went down one level to the pilot house to check on an electrical panel. About that time, a 14 or 15-foot wave hit the boat and he landed on his back.
"I went straight up into the air and as I was coming down, the boat got down to bottom of the trough and started to rise up," he said. "It's not just that I fell down, I was going down full force and the boat hit the trough and started coming up full force.
He would find out Tuesday he had fractured a disc in his back.
It took three or four minutes to compose himself, he said, but he crawled back to the wheelhouse.
As water filled the boat, steering became sluggish and Alexander worried about getting hit broadside by a big wave. He maneuvered instead by manipulating the twin 800-hp engines.
"As time went by it became harder and harder, because she was taking on water and starting to list," Alexander said.
Broderick, a former commercial fisherman, got the others in immersion suits and launched the raft.
Alexander continued to steer and talk to the Coast Guard by radio. That meant his immersion suit, often called a "Gumby" suit because of its bulkiness, was zipped up only to his waist, and he was aware his life was in danger.
When he got ready to leave, another swell hit him and threw him against the port wall. But he got his suit all the way and stepped to the back deck behind the wheel house.
He made his 1-foot jump into the gulf. That, he said, would be scarier than getting hoisted into the helicopter.
"''The most unnerving part is when you jump into the Gulf of Alaska," he said. "It's kind of cold, you know? Even though you have a survival suit, you get a little water in them right way. The water's cold."
The boat rolled a moment later, and eventually sank.
The raft was crowded.
"Five guys, a little bit of water in there," Alexander said. "But for me, as the skipper, I was feeling pretty good. I knew the chopper was on its way. I had everybody in the raft, I had everybody in a survival suit, and I had flares. I was feeling just fine."
The helicopter arrived 45 minutes after the mayday call. They heard it before they saw it.
The fired a flare as it approached and the helicopter neared the raft and the pilot, Lt. Jon Bartel, maneuvered the chopper close.
Rescue swimmer Rafael Aguero jumped in, swam to the raft, and explained how he would swim each of the survivors on their backs to a basket lowered from the helicopter 50 to 100 yards away.
Jacob Alexander was the first to be hoisted and Tom Alexander was the last.
The safety equipment, Alexander said, cost thousands of dollars. Some boat owners don't invest in it.
"They never think they're going to need it," he said.