After a six-hour search, divers recovered the body of a woman who died in a boat collision between a 20-foot Hewescraft aluminum skiff and a 58-foot commercial fishing vessel in the Wrangell Narrows near the mouth of Blind Slough on Wednesday morning, June 5.
An Alaska State Troopers spokesman on Friday identified the woman as Susan Paul, 73, of California.
A second individual, thrown from the skiff into the water, was rescued by a good Samaritan on the scene, according to a U.S. Coast Guard news release. The man was taken to the Petersburg hospital, suffering from hypothermia and minor injuries, according to Petersburg officials.
The name or hometown of the survivor was not released last week.
The accident occurred between the Petersburg-based commercial seiner Vis, passing southbound in the narrows, and a sportfishing skiff from one of the nearby fishing lodges, according to Petersburg Volunteer Fire Department communications officer Dave Berg. “The Hewescraft had two people on it, a man and a woman from out of state.”
The first mayday call was received at 8:52 a.m. June 5, the Coast Guard reported.
Berg relayed secondhand accounts of a man on the back deck of the skiff and a woman at the helm, the smaller vessel veering into the path of the seiner, a collision that threw the man from the back deck and overturned the vessel.
Mickey Knight was anchored nearby and witnessed the Samaritan vessel rushing toward the man in the water near the bow of the sinking skiff.
“Wrangell Search and Rescue arrived on the scene first with a floatplane carrying a diver,” said Knight. “Then the Coast Guard showed up, and (state) troopers showed up with their skiff.”
The Wrangell team included two EMTs equipped with advanced life-support equipment, Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department Capt. Jordan Buness reported in a news release.
Petersburg Search and Rescue “spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon searching for the Hewescraft boat which sank and was apparently carried by the current to a different location,” Berg said.
“A search commenced for the second person and that involved Coast Guard Air Station Sitka, Coast Guard Cutter Elderberry, Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Denman, Wrangell Search and Rescue, Petersburg Search and Rescue, Alaska State Troopers, and a couple of other good Samaritans,” the Coast Guard said.
After failing to locate the vessel, the Wrangell team returned to town “to retrieve a thermal drone, recently acquired through community donations, and a water Search and Rescue dog,” Buness reported.
“Upon return, the thermal drone successfully completed a search of the area and detected a fuel plume rising from underneath the water, near the dive team’s location. With coordination between the drone pilot and the dive team they narrowed their search area,” he explained.
“The Search and Rescue dog alerted that there was a submerged body in the area of interest. With coordination between Wrangell and Petersburg divers, the missing victim was located and recovered,” Buness reported in his news release.
The skiff was located about 3 p.m., Berg said.
The Coast Guard has started an official investigation into the incident.
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