Reflecting on the Rescue and Tragedy

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of A againgainst the Odds ad free right now Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app From Audible Originals, I'm Mike Corey And this is against the odds On the evening of january thirtieth, nineteen ninety eight, a fishing boat called the Le Conti sank in the Gulf of Alaska In the midst of a hellish Arctic storm, the survivors were forced to abandon ship into water that was about thirty eight degrees Fahrenheit. surrounded by fifty foot waves, with some rogue waves reaching as high as seventy feet Despite the conditions, the Coast Guard Air Station in Sitka launched multiple rescue attempts. The first two helicopters were unable to save the fishermen But a third finally succeeded in rescuing three of them The pilot of that third helicopter is my guest today Rired Coast Guard capaptain Steve Torpi Captain Torpi, Steve Welcome to Against the Odds Nsice to be here, I think most of our listeners probably have perspective of seeing the scenes that pass underneath from maybe an airplane passenger window But I imagine being the front seat of a helicopter, you can see so much, especially up in Alaska, where there's mountains and all sorts of glaciers and things Can you talk a little bit about what flying in Alaska is like? How is it different than flying in other places? Two things come to mind. First of all, we fly at three hundred feet most of the time in the Coast Guard. We're at three hundred feet above the water or above the land. mostly water in Alaska. So there are days where you can look out and see eight thousand foot mountain peaks covered in snow. It's an amazing view And then there are days where you launch in the middle of the night and you don't see a thing I remember flying several hours within a quarter of mile of a very big mountain and never seeing it. You know, just using the radar, using the GPS to navigate through very narrow fjords. to get to a location at three hundred feet and never seeing a thing. Just the nature of flying in Alaska. That's what makes it so hard We're gonna to speak more about this later, but let's dive into this particular night we're talking about Tell me about the conditions that day For me, it was a Friday night. My wife and I Carrie had just kind of settled in for a An evening that was rainy and windy, but that's very common in Alaska. And it wasn't until later on that things got interesting. So for me, it was just a quiet Friday night. But the sea wasn't so quiet, was it? Until I got offshore, I didn't have any idea what the sea state was So when we were heading out there. We were at three hundred feet and I couldn't see the ocean. It was too dark. It was too much sea spray, too much rain, snow really see the water until we got into a hundred foot hover. And it was then that we realized how big the ocean was. I had never seen team fifty foot waves And whenever there's a fifty foot wave, there's always some that are bigger. and I had never seen anything like that So Steve, you and your fellow Coastguards fly akkorsky H sixty J Hawk helicopters in Alaska. Can you give us just a general layout of what it's like to fly one of these The H sixty is a beast. I credit it with my life, honestly. Without that aircraft, I don't think I'd be able to give this interview It has got an enormous amount of power. It's built like a truck and it needed to be that night for us. It goes about three hundred miles. And then can spend forty five minutes oncene and then fly three hundred miles back. So about a six hundred mile radius They fly about one hundred and eighty knots speed. They can go as high as thirteen thousand feet, but we rarely do that They can hold about six to ten survivors It is very similar to the Navy's Seahawk helicopter and is basically born from the army lineage of Blackhawk helicopters. I loved flying it and I feel like I could do just about anything in that aircraft while I was flying it. So january thirtieth, nineteen ninety eight, was a Friday. We spoke about that. You said you were having a quiet night with your wife. Can you paint a picture of just what life in general was like for you back then Carry and I were having a ball. We were fairly newly married. We were stationed in Alaska Carri from a small town in Michigan. so she was very comfortable in a town of two thousand people. And Care was four months pregnant with our first child that night. So I had been home with her and fortunately, I had not had anything to drink because that would have that I couldn't have accepted the mission. I would have had to disqualify myself I think the fact that Careri was pregnant, maybe I was being a little sensitive to that. About nine o'clock is when the phone rang and And that's when they called me in Mhm So the phone rang, and then when you got to the base in Sitka, what was the situation that you were briefed on? What did you learn at first The first observation I had when I drove to the air station, it's only three miles from my house. Every light in the place was on There were people running around and there was all this activity in the hangar Hanger doors were open So I parked car, went up to the operation center, and the commanding officer, Ted Le Fver, was also in the operation center And there were lots of other people there as well, all trying to figure out if our aircraft had just crashed And it turned out it was a mistake, but as I'm standing there at the op center desk, realizing there's something huge going on right now, and I'm just about to learn what's happening And it turned out that Alaska Airlines had misinterpreted one of our helicopters statements on the radio that said they were making an approach to the water as if they were crashing in the water. So once that got resolved, then they could start telling me and Captain Le Fver what was happening. They started briefing us on the fact that we had launched the first helicopter And they were coming back. The second helicopter had left a few minutes before I got there and was currently on scene. and I was going to be the third helicopter, and it was still a chance that I wouldn't go. I do remember putting my hands in my pockets because I didn't want my captain to see my hands shaking Well, I imagine the adrenaline and just looking at the odds and the situation must have been quite an ordeal to understand digest what's happening when we learned that the first helicopter had been out there for three hours and was coming home because they couldn't affect the rescue. And the second helicopter was on scene. trying, that told me right there that The conditions were something I've never that none of us had really experienced before and very unusual because we're all cut from the same cloth. We all go through the same training, we all have similar abilities and When you hear that one of your station mates wasn't able to do something, it makes you pause for a second go What is it like out there And you had to wait for that first helicopter to come back before the next tw could take off. Why was that We had never launched all three helicopterers at once at night. and We only had two sets of night vision goggles So I had to wait being the third aircraft for the first aircraft to come back and give me their goggles. And I remember getting into the aircraft and just waiting for them to arrive. and the first aircraft landed. And there was an ambulance waiting as well. And that was surprising. I didn't expect that. and I didn't know why it was there. We were guessing. BeCause you had heard that they didn't get any of the survivors. So if there was no survivors in the actual aircraft Why is there an ambulance coming? Yeah, that didn't make any sense. Then we heard that their flight mechanic part of the crew had passed out from heat exhaustion and was being transferred to the ambulance because he was unconscious and needed medical care. And that also just added to the anticipation that this is not going to be an easy night What are the details that they give you about the conditions out there? So the pilot, Bill Addocks, was talking to me on the radio. So we didn't talk face to face. I was already in my helicopter and he was just shutting his helicopter down. And he told us that he had worked for several hours and it was really tough conditions. The waves were enormous. I just remember hearing the exhaustion in his voice and the concern he had for me and our crew knowing what he had just gone through. And then it was my turn to go out and see what I can do And for the man who had heat exhaustion, I imagine that'd be quite difficult to get in Alaska at night. So what happened there? We're all wearing dry suits. So he's in a dry suit in an aircraft, even though he's got his head out into the winds that's just ripping, the flight mechanic is the hoist operator. So he's got a control in his hand. He's holding onto the cable, trying to keep the cable in the basket under control And he's also they also experienced another remarkable occurrence is that they came within six feet of the water. They had tried to hold a hundred foot hover thereabouts, and the flight mechanic later said he could see the wave come within six feet of the aircraft at one point. And I'm sure that stress added up with the heat exhaustion and just wiped them out. Wow. So stressful, to say the least, and as the new night vision goggles, the ones from the first chopper get transferred to your chop or the third one You head out, how are you feeling taking off getting yourself into the thick of it all Well, one of the things that helped us a great deal is as the first aircraft was flying home. They recommended a few things we do They said, takeake an extra flight mechanic, have an extra person on the aircraft. So instead of four We had five people on board takeake more smoke flares M chemLits and take some sandbags because their basket The first aircraft's basket was Bown so severely by the wind, it was really hard to control. So the thought was they put a heavy sandbag in it It might help control it So we had gamed this out before we even got in the helicopter. You know, Captain Le Fver, myself and Fred Colt, our flight mechanic Honnold and Mike Fish all kind of gathered together real quick, kind of a pre fllight briefing and we talked about all the things we can do recommended by the first aircraft and anything else we could think of to try to put the odds more in our favor On thing we didn't discuss is which pilot was going to sit in which seat Captain the Fver was new to the air station. He is my boss. He is the CO, the commanding officer of the air station. er very unusual that we would have to call in the commanding officer to come fly, but we were out of pilots. It was the captain and myself. So in Alaska, the two seats matter. The person in the right seat does the hoisting, because that's the hoist is on the right side of the helicopter The person in left seat does the navigation. The navigation is where Alaska demands the most of pilots. It is very difficult to navigate in Alaska. You cannot be wrong. If you're wrong, you' hit a mountain and you'll die. So the left seat is very important. and typically the more experienced pilot would sit in the left seat because it's assumed that the person in the right seat would be perfectly capable of hoisting under any normal circumstances, but this case was different I knew it right away. and I was walking out to the aircraft I remember seeing the captain get into the right seat. and the right seat is where he traditionally had flown. He's new to the air station and didn't have a lot of experience in that aircraft. So he was most comfortable in the right seat and I just knew this case was going to be different. and I remember finishing my walk around and he's already strapped in and the door was open and I looked up at him. I said, Captain, what do you think about the right seat? And he looked down at me. I didn't know what his response was going be. I could just be fired at that point I'm kicking him out of his seat. I mean, he basically owns the air station, but when we are together in the aircraft I am the aircraft commander because I had the most experience, even though he's my boss So he looked down at me and graciously just unbuckled and said, Steve, I'd do the same thing if I were in your shoes. So we got out, got in left seat Now he's in the left seat, not a place he's very comfortable in, and I'm in the right seat. The flying pilot in the right seat does most of the flying while we're hoisting because The flight mechanic is also on the right side of the aircraft looking out to the right. And just to clarify that, so the pilot's not doing the hoisting himself. So but he has a better view of where the basket's going to go on the right side of the plane where the hoist is so he can navigate the plane so that the mechanic in the back can actually do a lot of the manual work of lowering the basket down and handling the survivors when they come up. Yeah, it's very important to realize while we're hoisting pilot in the right seat, there's a point at which he can't see. what we're hoisting to anymore So the hoist operator is the eyes for the pilot. So the pilot is basically blind. He can't see the target. because it's beneath them. The only person that can see that is the flight mechanic. So it took another level of communication between Fred and I to get the helicopter over the place that we needed in order to get the basket where it needed to be you and your crew took off from the Coast Guard base in Sitka and began flying out into the storm to find the fishermen, which is about one hundred twenty miles away aroundround fifteen minutes into the flight An alert went off. What was it? Yeah, that was an interesting realization. I'm flying from Sitka to the location of the people in the water The second aircraft was flying from the location where the people are in the water back to the air station We are basically on the same flight path. In Alaska, you get very comfortable being the only aircraft out there So when that alert and our aircraft went off, that said there's another aircraft close by. all of our attention and all of us went, what? And then we realized it's the other aircraft, our own aircraft coming the opposite direction, and I could see clearly their aircraft passing down my right side And that's when Dave Durham, the commander of that aircraft, started telling me what he just experienced. Which wasn't good Now his voice was as shook up as I've ever heard He was one of my mentors. He was one of the senior members of the air station. And hearing how exhausted and tired and how concerned he was about me I'll never forget. I mean, he basically said it's pretty bad out there. He said, just be careful. He knew what I was about to experience because he just did. And he had to make one of the most difficult decisions anybody has to make as did the first aircraft is that they were gonna to run out of gas if they stayed any longer, so they had to come home And they had to leave knowing there's still people in the water. Yeah. And the flight was supposed to take about an hour, but how long did it actually take to get there? And when you got there, did you find the fisherman right away Well, that's kind of the other odd realization one hundred and twenty miles due west is where the people were That takes an hour because we fly one hundred and twenty miles an hour, essentially And we were there in just over thirty minutes. I had an eighty knot tailwind So all of a sudden we're here and the needles that are pointing to where the location of the emergency beacons in the water are Basically spun. All of a sudden we just passed them And then we realized we got to turn around and we had somehow flown seven miles downwind of the scene So at that point, we had to make our way back to the location of where the survivors were Well, I think that that lends credence to how terrible the storm was because you said there was eighty knot tailwinds. that's like ninety two miles per hour. winds blowing you. So I imagine it's not too difficult to get thrown a few miles off course when the storm is this bad Normally, in order to go from three hundred feet down to one hundred feet where we will then be able to see the water and see the survivors We do a controlled approach where we fly seventy knots And we just slowly descend down to a hundred feet. And you do it while you're pointed into the wind So I'm pointed at the wind And I'm flying at seventy knots, expecting to start to descend down to one hundred feet And I looked at this other instrument, it's called a Dpppler and it tells me how fast I'm moving over the ground, not through the air, but over the ground. tells me I'm going backwards and And that is something I've never experienced before. and it told me that the wind is much stronger than I hadd ever experienced I just had to basically speed up and fly forward and gradually creep up on the survivor's location Which we did, And I remember just laughing at that and mentioning it to the Captain L fever and we were both kind of chuckled about it and descended down to a hundred feet where the needle pointed to, and I could see kind of a blurry mass of reflective tape on the back of the survivor' survival suits You could never count the people. You couldn't see it that clearly. It was just a blurry mess of rain and wind. and sea spray and the people were moving substantially up and down left and right just rising on these huge waves and then disappearing behind them and then hearing again and I could not see through all of the rain. the search lightight was also very difficult to use because if I pointed it forward, all I saw was this Star Wars light speed looking thing with all the snow and rain coming at me. Yeah, like car headlights in a storm too. Yeah, it just it was useless. so We kind of just got into a hover and started briefing on how we're going to attack this thing And before you could attack this thing by lowering the rescue basket, you dropped flares in order to do something that's called station keepeping. Can you explain that a bit to Astar? Sure. The survivors are in front of me. I'm using them as a reference to tell me which end is up likeike walking into a completely black room and having one little pinpoint of light to give you reference That's what it was like. So I needed to fly past the survivors and go up wind of them, drop the flares. And my plan was just to simply back up So the crew got ready to deploy the flares and as soon as I got over the survivors, they went underneath me I lost track of them. And I looked up And I couldn't see a thing. I had no idea which end it was up My stomach just nodted up and I was like, oh, I am over my head right now So I literally counted o Mississippi. I said it in my head And I said, drop, drop, drop. They threw the flares out the door and That's when things went sideways. I must have pulled back too much or a wind gus caught. I don't know what happened, but the aircraft's nose was thirty degrees nose up. I'm going backwards at over forty knots I have no idea what's behind me and I'm crashing through a hundred feet going down And I remember recovering at thirty feet, while I'm still going backwards. and my fear was I was going to back into a wave And everybody is screaming. I went from thirty degrees nose up to thirty degrees nose down, a sixty degree. change never done that before in this aircraft And I remember just pulling up the collective prior to getting out there, Captain Lefver and I had agreed that he's going to help me with the collective rarely share the controls. In this case, he was going to help me negotiate the wave heights by adding power with the collective having us climb up to clear the waves As we were crashing, I felt him pulling up on the collective. And I remember looking up at the torque of the aircraft and that's basically how much power we're pulling. And I remember seeing one hundred and thirty percent Our limit was one hundred and twenty seven I honestly, I only got a glimpse of it because I also was looking at our altimeter which was telling us we're at thirty feet. And I remember thinking initially, we can't break the helicopter. I don't want to pull that much power and then realizing I'm fighting the captain a little bit. And then my next recollection was, he's right. We need to not die right now. So what happened is we recovered and then started climbing up and we got back up to one hundred feet. And we had to take a minute just to kind of recenter ourselves At that point, I could see the survivors. We had smoke flares in the water and I said the corniest thing I've ever said is all right guys Let's get to work And I remember thinking, o, that sounded really dumb And C me clarify a few things. So you were saying that you and Captain Nay Fver were flying the helicopter in a sort of unusual way where you both had hands on the controls and you were helping each other. You mentioned something called the collollective. Can you just elaborate on what that is? Yeah, the collective is a lever that's in your left hand and it goes up and down and it basically changes the power on the aircraft. it changes the pitch of the rotor blades and it makes you go basically up and down. And it's part of the pilot duties to manage the collective, the cyclic, which is the stick pedals And sharing controls is unusual, but we had to do it I was looking out to my right almost all night. Captain Fleaver was looking forward at the waves that were sometimes goingo above us. You know, the smoke flares would actually rise above our helicopter and Captain would go, there's a big one coming And he would pull on the collective and initiate the climb to ensure we didn't like fly right into the front side of a wave. That's incredible to even pitchure. It's just the cinema of this Chaotic scene chopper rattling away with the blades, flares in this milky ocean with the snow and the rain just rising above and then you guys having to work together and trust each other one hundred percent on both sets of controls to be able to get this basket to the right point, but also not be engulfed by the waves that you can see with these smokey flares rising above window. that is an incredible visual And we were trying to hold one hundred feet. It just begs the question. There's no measuring stick out there, but Those waves sometimes were bigger than us That's incredible to think about, wow Okay, so the flares were in the water and now was the time to start dropping the basket. I imagine in this scenario with the vertical movement of the waves and the horizontal pushing of the ocean That must have been quite the struggle to be able to get over them directly It was. and it was a learning experience for both Fred and I. I was moving the cycllic, the stick more than I've ever moved it before in my life. And I can remember seeing the rotors go up and down more than I've ever seen them. I beat the hell out of a helicopter And these fishermen in the water. how long had they been there at this point God hours, five hours or so. I don't know exactly when they're boat capsized It was long enough for the boat to capsize for their emergency beacon to get set off that alerted the Coast Guard told the air station to go launch and then have two helicopters come out. So it it was ours. And that's pushing the edge of what humans are able to do in water that is so close to freezing. It was a thirty eight Fahrenheit or something like that. So these men, you knew were going to be in dire shape if you could get a hold of one of them It wasn't just that it was cold, it was that they were in a washer machine. Yeah. They were going up and down these waves getting tumbled all the time They did some really, really smart things though. They stayed together as much as they could We didn't know how many people were on the boat. but We could see four or five people down there. So we were just focused on them When you finally got a hold of one of the fishermen and brought him up in the basket, How did it feel to have one man in the chopper after such incredible difficulty Yeah, it took probably took twenty minutes just to get the basket close. And Fred did a marvelous job. Fred and Lee were both in the cabin trying to get that basket timing right I started noticing that the distances are getting smaller and smaller. Then I heard hole, and I was like, cool. So we got the basket near the survivors and Fred said there's someone in the basket and he started hoisting the person up And wow, I was thrilled I mean, I don't know how to describe that feeling. I mean, the guy's coming up and then he got into the aircraft. They brought him in and I looked back and I could see him We just got them. We're going to get all of them I absolutely knew. We're going to get all these people now. So once the basket came in, the person got out of the basket We started for the second waste You're flying the helicopter in this terrible storm. You're hovering over the stranded fishermen. You've already managed to rescue one of them, and you're sending this basket back down a second time. But this time, things didn't go as well as the first Tell us a bit about that. We started the second hoist and we're all kind of on a high. We got it down. that second hoist probably took about ten or twelve minutes or so And then that's when it got a little bit different The sea state got a little bit worse. Fred was having a hard time seeing the survivors, the sea spray, the wind blowing so hard that he couldn't where' one hundred feet, he couldn't see the survivors well enough to distinguish them h And the basket is near them. and he said, basically hold, fold and I'm holding. and Bear in mind, I still can't see the survivors. I'm just holding based on the ocean And then he said, I think someone's in the basket. and it was a, I don't know, maybe a minute and he started pulling the basket up. And there was an awkward silence. And I remember just like waiting for the next piece of information that Fred to give me to tell me Things are all right And as the basket came up, bear in mind, the winds blowing so hard, the basket's not coming straight up. It's coming from behind the helicopter. It's like forty five degrees being blown behind us. So it's coming up at a very awkward angle So as it comes up, I could just hear the confusion in Fred's voice about what's happening and then Mike Fish, our rescue swimmer. his head out the door and could see There was someone in the basket, but there was also someone hanging on the outside of the basket. There were two people. And it wasn't long after that that u I can't get through this point without rememembering how he felt? Yeah, I imagine it was very difficult The basket was close to the aircraft and Mike said The person on the outside of the basket just fell and I instantly looked at my radar altimeter and it said one hundred and three feet. And I knew you can't survive that fall. not on that ocean. And, uh We continued with the recovery Gut the person in the basket in the aircraft And I backed up and I could see the person had fallen in the water. I could see him. and he was in front of me and he was floating and he wasn't moving And I knew He was dead And I I just lost them And I imagine that yeah changed the attitude of the rescue from success, having one and two people, but then having one. Unfortunately, fall That was agony Yeah. I have never felt so deflated and so just I didn't know how to recover from it. I didn't have time to think about that, but I remember looking down and trying to be as subjective as I could and seeing him And then we began concentrating on the next order of business, which was to get the third person Your co pilot, Ted Lefver, b everyone some more time on scene by arranging a return to a closer base in Yakutat And this allowed you more time to work on the third fisherman What decisions did you have to make at that moment I remember first off, hearing Captain Sver said if we recover in Yakad We can spend another forty five minutes on scene. And I remember thinking, I don't really want to do that. I'm starting to get really tired. My concentration is starting to ebb a little bit gave me a little bit more of a sense that we can continue trying to get the third person. So We had a choice. Do we try to spend time and recovering the person that had just fallen O do we try to get the other person and the logical choice was to get the person that's still P part of the survivor pack We elected to do that. and We started that third hoist And ultimately, we got the third person aboard. Mike Fish had also volunteered multiple times to go deploy into the water. And Mike Fish, the rescue Sumer, wanted to go in to try and save Mark Morley, who was the one who fell from the basket we did try to recover him using the basket. We actually got very, very close to putting the basket right on top of him, but there was no movement There was no effort from him to get into the basket. after five or ten or fifteen minutes of trying to do that Captain the fever rightightfully so at the crew and said it's time for us to go home. There's nothing else for us to do. He saw me starting to slow down. He could tell Fred was getting tired. It was time to basically depart sce and go to Yaktet and land And how is that flight back to Yakutat What was this seem like when you got there? I remember transferring the controls over to the captain because I was too tired to fly. and my job was just to basically navigate us from point A to point B It was very quiet. Nobody in the aircraft was really talking We were up front flying to a small little airport In January, nobody really uses that airport. It's mostostly a hunting and fishing location. so we landed and there wasn't much there other than an ambulance And the crew took the survivors, brought them into the ambulance, and they disappeared. They went off to the hospital And that was it. They were gone. and We started doing the post flight inspection just to kind of look at things and see how things go. I remember looking at the aircraft and seeing a piece of it broken off. and it was the antenna O HF antenna, high frequency antenna was broken And I asked Fred, hey, how did that happen? He goes, the last guy that recovered had a buoy ball tied to him And that buoy ball was about three or four feet in diameter. and it was flailing around in the wind while he was in the basket. And when it came up G the side of the aircraft and broke off that antenna If it had touched the tail rotor even by a fraction of an inch, it would have destroyed the tailrotor and we would have instantly had to crash in the ocean We would not be here Geez man, so you get back. And it's what three, four AM. Can some boys get a beer at the time time of day in Alaska or what? Oh, under normal circumstances it would have been an absolute yes, but we're all too tired. And I knew we had to fly home the next day and if we have anything to drink, we're gonna completely delay that return So we elected not to have any beer. It was almost a unanimous decision. But we're sitting in the lobby of this Alaska hotel bar restaurant thing It basically had one sign on it It said Beer, food and lodging. That's all it didn't even have a name. It just said beer food and lodging. Perfect. that's all you need. But the lodging was all shut off. It was fifty degrees in the rooms. Captain Lefver and I stayed in one room and the other guys stayed in a think in a different room and there's no way I could go sleep. I was still wired from that whole event. So we stayed there for two or three hours and I think all of us kind of woke up and just wandered out back into the lobby and sat around just tryed to figure out what we're going to do next. this event happened, was there any talk amongst the crew How did you guys deal with Mark Morley who fell I think there's several stages people go through And after the case, We all talked about it. You know, we debriefed ourselves. We were debriefed by the Coast Guard. We all understand There are times where we can't save everyone. and Knowing that we did save three people that night was very comforting We take this job because we want to save everyone and sometimes just can't And that takes some real introspection to make sure that you understand that. and that it's a dangerous world. So we talked about the techniques we used, we talked about what could we have done differently? And there's really nothing that I think we could have put in place that would have made the outcome any different So I think all of us are comforted by that, but I think all of us also recognize that This is both a Coast Guard success as well as a tragedy. and you know, we just have to find ways to deal with it Did you ever see the fishermen you rescued again The only time we saw them was about a month or so later when we did the investigation. Whenever there's a maritime death, the Coast Guard does a marine investigation and they have a hearing. And the hearing was in Sitka and we went and my crew was there, the survivors were there, and the fiancee of the captain that had fallen. Morley was also there. That's when I learned that she was also four months pregnant with their first child. I did want to speak to her specifically during my hearing testimony Be I wanted to know how her husband or her fiancee had passed away. I wanted her to understand that we did everything we possibly could And, uh Nature was just bigger than us that night. Yeah, and I just want to say thank you for sharing That story and just letting us know how it felt. So I just want to say thank you for that. It actually helps talk about it to be honest Steve Torpy, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today on Against the Odds. My pleasure Thankk you very Follow Against the Odds on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcast. You can listen to all episodes of Against the Odds ad free by joining Audible. From Audible Originals, this is episode four of Coast Guard Rescue on Alaska's High seas Produced by Audible. I'm your host, Mike Corey Pauly Striker produced this episode. Engineered by Sergi Enriquz. Original theme music by Scott Velazquez and two K for Freezon Sn sereries produced by Emily Frost Managing producer Des Blaylock Senior producers, Andy Herman and Austin Rackless Executive producer for Audible, Jenny Laower Beckman. Head of Audible Originals North America, Marshall Louis