Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Crab vessel that sank in Gulf of Alaska CG Searching

At least two feet in the woods but it's the drifting from fields and river beds that really gets us.

In the Donnelly area the snow is as high as my pickup cab.

I think Tok and Northway have more than Delta minus the extreme drifting.

Ouch... Winter it is...

Holy that's a lot more snow than normal.

spellcheck?

Are you hypoderthermic? or hypochondriodermic? or?



Pretty hard to blame that one on spellcheck, but an editor should hang tonight!

They released the names of the missing men.
There was the captain, Cobban, his son David Lee Cobban, crew members Arthur Ganacias, Brock Rainey and Seth Rousseau-Gano.
The two survivors were Dean Gribble Jr. and John Lawler.

I'd had worked with John Lawler a few seasons, he captained the Sea Falcon for salmon in Bristol Bay for a couple years.
I didn't know he was on the Scandies Rose this season until I started getting emails after they sank.

Dean Gribble posted these few words about the event to YouTube last night...

The Scandies Rose, Alaska in 2019.

New Years Eve 2019
Waves filled the life raft with chest-deep water, and at times threatened to flip it. The light atop a canopy was supposed to help rescuers spot them in the night, but it had gone out.

For John Lawler, the only encouraging thing was a glow from a second life raft about a quarter-mile away. He hoped that light would stay on, and someone would find him and crewmate Dean Gribble Jr. in the pitch-black aftermath of Scandies Rose crab boat going down in the Gulf of Alaska.

“We would lose sight of it because the waves were so big, but it would always reappear, ” said Lawler, a 34-year-old crabber from Anchorage, Alaska.



Lawler and Gribble, of Edmonds, were veterans of the Alaska crab fleet. They were on their first trip aboard the 130-foot Scandies Rose, which left Kodiak, Alaska, on Dec. 30 with a crew of seven and went down around 10 p.m. Dec. 31. They also were the only two survivors, with the other five lost at sea: The captain, Gary Cobban Jr., 60; his son, David Cobban, 30; Seth Rousseau-Gano, 29; Brock Rainey, 47; and Arthur Ganacias, 50.

Lawler offered the most detailed account yet made public of what it took to survive a sinking that left him and Gribble adrift in 20-foot seas for four hours. Lawler said he did not want to comment on why the boat may have gone down.

On the night of Dec. 31, Lawler was asleep in his bunk when he was awakened by the boat listing hard on its starboard side. Though no emergency alarms were sounding, Lawler, who has been crabbing since 2010, was certain the the boat was in grave danger of sinking.

Lawler and other crew rushed to the wheelhouse as the captain relayed a radio call about the imperiled Scandies Rose to another skipper, then got off a mayday distress call.

By then, the boat was listing so heavily that Lawler had to climb to a box that contained insulated survival suits, which offer protection from the chill sea. He knew from training that he typically took a medium. He grabbed a bigger size, green in color, to make sure he could put it on quickly. Yet once it was on, the zipper jammed at the bottom, and Gribble spent anxious moments helping Lawler pull it all the way up.

Lawler said he and Gribble, with difficulty, made their way out of the wheelhouse as the vessel rolled more. They found themselves standing on the boat’s side. They hoped other crew would follow. But they did not see anyone leave the wheelhouse.

“Dean and I both wish everyone else would have made it to the life raft with us. We both wish there was more time. But it was out of our hands. We got out of the door, and that’s all we could do,” said Lawler, who also said he wanted to convey his condolences to the families of those lost.

Gribble, in a video posted last week and then taken off public view, also expressed sympathies to his crewmates’ families.

Once the two men were outside of the wheelhouse, Lawler said, an alarm went off.

Lawler said he gripped a scupper — an opening on the boat’s side — to try to hang on. Even though he was standing knee-deep in water, he thought the Scandies Rose might retain air pockets that would keep it afloat.

But a big wave knocked Lawler and Gribble off the boat.

Once in the water, they tried to use a piece of line to stay together but it tangled around their feet. They abandoned that effort.

As Lawler drifted away from the Scandies Rose, he recalls an awful final sight of the boat.

“We saw the bow sticking up like a scene out of the Titanic,” he said.

Two life rafts inflated and floated free from the boat as it sank. And after some 20 minutes bobbing about in the ocean, Lawler recalls looking over his shoulder and seeing Gribble in one of the rafts.

“He yelled, ‘Johnny,’ and I swam as hard as I could to get to him … and pulled myself in,” Lawler recalled. “I felt like the weight of a feather getting into it. It was my adrenaline pumping.”




In the raft, they faced another battle for survival.

They went to opposite sides to make the raft more stable. It was covered with a canopy, and Lawler sat beside a flap door. He would peek outside to scout for the next big wave to slam over the craft.

“I would yell, ‘here comes another,’ and we would brace ourselves to keep from flipping over.”

They did not have a locator beacon to send signals that could enable rescuers to track their position, Lawler said. They sent off some flares but there was no sign anyone saw them.

Lawler did not think they would be found. The chances seemed more remote when the dome light on top of the canopy went out. Still, Lawler could occasionally catch sight of the light on the second life raft as it drifted some distance away.

The two men tried to keep their spirits up. They noted how different their New Year’s Eve was from those they had in the past. Gradually, they became colder, and quieter. Lawler could not help but focus on his wife and unborn child.

“We both had the same thought. We thought we were dead. But at least our families would recover our bodies,” Lawler said.

But sometime before 2 a.m. New Year’s Day, Lawler noticed something different about the second life raft. He saw a second light — at sea level — close by its side. Maybe help was near.

Lawler thought his mind might be playing tricks on him. But maybe not.

He found a flashlight in a bag in the life raft and waved it back and forth. He made hand signals.

Then, the light next to the other life raft moved up into the air.

The light was fastened to a swimmer set down by a Coast Guard helicopter crew.

The swimmer had found that raft empty and was moving on.

The helicopter soon hovered over the raft that sheltered Gribble and Lawler.

Rescue was at hand.




Dan Mattsen went to bed Dec. 31 with his fishing boat, the Amatuli, finally snug in port in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, after a three-day trip through difficult seas. He wished a happy new year to his wife back home in Bremerton, then retired to his cabin.

He woke up the next morning to horrendous news, broken through text messages of condolence on his cellphone. The Scandies Rose — the crab boat boat he co-owned — had gone down in rough seas off the Alaska Peninsula. Of the seven crew, two had been rescued and five were lost, including the captain, Gary Cobban Jr., his longtime friend and business partner.

“I first thought, this can’t be true. Not the Scandies Rose and not Gary … It was mind-numbing … a nightmare, ” Mattsen recalled in an interview Monday in Bremerton. He has struggled along with investigators from the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to understand what went so terribly wrong after the 130-foot vessel left Kodiak, Alaska, to start a new winter season in the Bering Sea.

Mattsen during the past week has reached out to the families of the survivors. He also has answered hours of questioning from investigators about the accident, which came in a difficult stretch of water amid 20-foot seas. A marine forecast for the area called for heavy freezing spray, which can coat a boat with ice that can dramatically reduce stability.

Mattsen and his boat had begun their voyage in Kodiak, leaving several days earlier than Cobban. He recalls how Cobban, whose father also was a Kodiak-based crabber, was eager for the new season, when the boat would have the harvest rights to some 600,000 pounds of snow crab. Cobban, 60, had been in Kodiak to rework some gear, and planned to conduct a brief fishery for cod that he would use to prospect for the best spots to catch crab.

“Gary has been running boats since he was about 16 years old … and he’s been running larger boats probably since he was 20 or 21,” Mattsen said.

Mattsen said he had exchanged radio messages with Cobban on New Year’s Eve, the day of the sinking.

“He just said the weather was crappy and my weather was crappy, too. I mean, I was just kind of doing typical captain commiserating,” Mattsen said.

Coast Guard interviews with the two survivors indicate that when disaster struck, the younger Cobban was in the wheelhouse sending out a mayday distress call, according to Mattsen. It is unclear whether he or any of the other missing crew had time to get into survival suits and evacuate the sinking vessel, which rolled on its side and then went down stern-first.

Gribble, in a YouTube video posted last week that was later withdrawn from public view, talked about issues with safety equipment. He noted that an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) failed to go off to signal the vessel’s position.

Mattsen said the safety gear met regulatory standards. He said the EPIRB goes off as it pops to the surface, and might have got caught underwater as the vessel sank.

“Clearly emotions are running raw,” he said. “I am very happy he [Gribble] made it. Our crew is family.”

The Scandies Rose has long been a workhorse of the Alaska crab fleet. It was built in 1978, and since Mattsen and Cobban took over ownership of the vessel in 2008, it has been brought to Seattle each year for maintenance and pulled out of the water every other year for additional work, according to Mattsen.

The Scandies Rose sinking comes less than three years after the Feb. 11, 2017, demise of another Alaska crab boat — the Destination, which sank in the Bering Sea, killing all six crew amid treacherous conditions that included freezing spray.

A Coast Guard investigation that concluded in 2019 found that the Destination’s pots were heavier than assumed by the captain, and could have thrown off stability calculations. The Coast Guard also found that an on-board booklet to guide the loading was out of date.

Mattsen said he and Cobban tried to learn from the Coast Guard findings about the Destination as they prepared the Scandies Rose for the 2020 harvests.

Last spring, they weighed the Scandies Rose pots and found they were significantly heavier than previously thought. That prompted a revision in the loading booklet to prevent the vessel from carrying too much weight as pots were stacked on deck at the beginning of the harvest seasons.

Mattsen said reports indicate the Scandies Rose was carrying no more than 195 pots as the vessel left Kodiak. That was below the 208-pot limit allowed in the loading booklet, he said.

In the months ahead, Coast Guard and NTSB officials will continue to investigate the sinking.

“We want to know what happened because if the Scandies Rose can sink in these conditions, any crabber can,” Mattsen said.

Thanks Jeff.

Such a tragic loss!

Knowing little about the subject, admittedly, but it seems to me wind driven freezing spray is the most likely culprit, with more build-up on the windward side. It sounds like the list was progressive.

Above deck load shifting or a leak below deck are also possibles. I can't think of any other potential causes, offhand.

Ill touch on some elements of the above article. In short the boat was very poorly run by a captain who was derelict in his responsibilities.



"Though no emergency alarms were sounding."

That vessel is required to have audible and visual high water alarms in each compartment that has through hull penetrations. Testing the alarms is required every 30 days and is advised prior to each trip.


"Lawler and Gribble, of Edmonds, were veterans of the Alaska crab fleet. They were on their first trip aboard the 130-foot Scandies Rose."

Laws require a thorough safety orientation of new crewmembers.


"Lawler and other crew rushed to the wheelhouse as the captain relayed a radio call about the imperiled Scandies Rose to another skipper."

Had they received their crew orientation, they would have executed their emergency assignments. Those emergency assignments would not have put them in the wheelhouse. Had they received that orientation, part of it would have been to have demonstrated what the high water alarms sound like.

"insulated survival suits, which offer protection from the chill sea. He knew from training that he typically took a medium."

In the orientation they should have been shown "their" survival suit. They should have donned it, removed it and stowed it in a bag in a way where theirs could not be mistaken for another crewmembers.


“I would yell, ‘here comes another,’ and we would brace ourselves to keep from flipping over.”

The liferaft has a full ballast. It ain't going to flip over. With proper training they would have known that. How can "veterans" not know this.


"Coast Guard interviews with the two survivors indicate that when disaster struck, the younger Cobban was in the wheelhouse sending out a mayday distress call, according to Mattsen."

If he was in the wheelhouse making a distress call, he should have sounded the ship's general alarm to notify the crew to they were experiencing an emergency.




There's more. That's just some quick observations. Almost every commercial fishing vessel captain I know skimps on orientation and training.

Well then!

I’m not sure. I have never been in a life raft in 20 footers pushed by a 40 knot breeze - in the gulf, at night.

I think your certainty that said ballasted raft wouldn’t flip over might depart rather quickly in the above conditions - especially if a few of those 20 footers had a steep face or were breaking.

Amsea has us flip a raft, and board in suits to get our card...

Impossible!.....they’re fully ballasted. 😉

Terrible way to bring in the new year for those families.

I am not sure about rafts flipping at sea. I have been trying to avoid ever ending up in one. I have never heard mentioned that the rafts couldn’t flip over though in the training i have had though. Like I said I have righted a raft solo while wearing a gumbie.

Gary was running for cover, they were listing due to ice build up not water in the hull.
The winds and the waves were too severe to put the crew on top of the pots to sledge hammer the ice.

As Dean Gribble states in his video, "everyone was doing everything they could".....

Cannot imagine being in my bunk when things were that dicey... or icy.

Sounds like time to dump pots but if conditions don’t allow you to de-ice they’d likely hamper dumping pots. I guess it comes down to risking 1 or 2 lives for the rest of the crew and vessel.

Sad situation but it highlights the heroics of our Coast Guard. Thank God for their bravery and competence.

You flipped a raft that deployed upside down to right side up. You are not going to get a ballasted raft to flip from right side up to upside down.