3 commercial fishermen rescued off Sonoma Coast by fellow crabbers as boat sinks

Three commercial crabbers whose boat went down several miles off the Sonoma Coast were rescued late Tuesday afternoon through a combination of close communication and sheer luck.

The crew of the Susan E already was in the water, clutching floating debris, when another fishing crew arrived, drawn by their frantic calls, and was able to pull them from the ocean in time.

But it was a terrifyingly close call, coming just 12 days after another crabber they all knew, Ryan Kozlowski, 30, lost his life at sea.

“It was f--king scary,” said Kyle Alexander, a deckhand on the 40-foot Argo, which had been harvesting crab from the Timber Cove area earlier in the day and was the only boat coming into Bodega Bay behind the Susan E from up north. “To see my friends floating next to a boat that was going down...”

“A lot of things went wrong,” he said, “but a lot of things went right for us to be there.”

Argo Captain Michael Cooley said the ocean conditions were challenging Tuesday, with 6- to 7-foot swells and winds about 25 mph, when the 38-foot Susan E, weighted down with about 3,000 pounds of crab pots, began to take on water.

Unbeknownst to crew members, who were not available for comment and whose names their friends withheld out of courtesy, the bilge pump had stopped working so the boat kept taking on water, Cooley said.

Finally, water got into the alternator and the boat shut down.

“They were eventually just sitting ducks in the ocean” — about 200 feet of it — several miles off shore, Cooley said.

During the process, a deckhand on the Susan E called Alexander, a close friend, to say there were problems aboard his boat and it was taking on water. Cooley was headed their direction with plans to tow them into port.

Then came another call, and the deckhand was screaming the boat was going down. It was a reality that Cooley, about 300 yards or so away, could see with his own eyes as the bow came up, the boat went vertical and down.

No one was wearing a life vest or neoprene immersion suit, Cooley said. “They kind of thought they had more time. They could see our boat. They thought we were going to get to them,” he said.

Instead, the Argo had to pass by them as one man gripped a cooler, another a large buoy and a third something else.

Cooley said it took some doing, with the dangerous ocean conditions, to position the boat so he could get to them through the waves and debris. “Then we basically got them out of the water one by one with the life ring,” he said.

The men were only mildly hypothermic. They were stripped of their wet clothes, put into sleeping bags and given hot coffee and water, Cooley said.

Around that time a Coast Guard rescue lifeboat arrived and, since the ocean conditions made a boat-to-boat transfer a dicey proposition, the crew escorted the Argo for the roughly hour and 40-minute trip back to dock, Petty Officer Bryan Rojas said.

Rojas said emergency medics met the boat, but no one needed medical care.

“It was amazing that it ended the way that it ended, with everyone being OK,” Cooley said.

“There’s a reason they call it a pretty dangerous job,” Alexander added.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.