Fisherman survives after spending 26 HOURS adrift in plastic crate in freezing Alaskan sea - PHOTOS

A fisherman survived a night adrift in the Alaskan sea after his boat sank by floating in a small plastic crate.

Ryan Harris, 19, was thrown into the Pacific Ocean near Sitka when his two-man boat overturned in choppy waters.

He was rescued from the 4ft-by-4ft fish bin more than 24 hours after the vessel sank, by a coastguard helicopter. Mr Harris said he kept his spirits up after being cast adrift on Friday by talking to himself and singing.

His fellow crew-member, Stonie 'Mac' Huffman, was separately rescued the next morning, from a beach about 25 miles north-west of Alaskan city Sitka.

Harris told the Daily Sitka Sentinel he was delighted he and his companion had both survived after risking either drowning or catching hypothermia when they were flung from the 28-foot aluminum boat in temperatures of just 46f (8C).
 
'It's truly a miracle they survived,' said Sitka Mountain Rescue Director Don Kluting, who helped in the search.  'I never thought I was going to die, but I was worried about Mac,' said Mr Harris. 'I'm glad to be here.'

They were dumped into the water before they could send a mayday. The search for them started after friends reported them late back on Friday night.

The men had been fishing for coho salmon about two miles off Cape Edgecumbe when the hydraulics failed on their boat. They fixed that problem but decided to head back to port when a huge wave tipped the boat on to its side.

Two survival suits were on board, but neither man was wearing one when the boat went down. After the boat capsized, they climbed on to the upturned hull.

'We had no radio, no cell phones,' said Mr Harris.
Mr Huffman later found a survival suit that had floated from the wreckage and grabbed a plastic bin lid for flotation.

The two managed to grab some empty fish totes that had washed loose and Mr Huffman stabilised one while Mr Harris climbed inside.

Eight-foot waves soon separated the men. Mr Huffman drifted away with the lid while he struggled to get into the survival suit for two hours.
At one point, Mr Harris said, his slipped out of the bin and he struck his head.

But he was able to get back in and keep it balanced for the remainder of the 26 hours until his rescue.
The toughest part was not knowing the fate of his friend, Mr Harris said.
'I gave myself a pep talk,' he said. He kept repeating for four hours: 'I'm Ryan Hunter Harris and I'm not going to die here.'

During his sleepless night, he sang songs including Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to keep up his spirits.

The coastguard dispatched a helicopter early Saturday and three others later that day. Alaska State Troopers and Sitka Mountain Rescue sent four boats out searching, said Mr Kluting.
The troopers found Huffman, an experienced fisherman in his mid-40s, who had reached the beach at Point Amelia about an hour before troopers spotted him waving on the shore.

Mr Harris suffered blistered hands from clutching the bin and a cut above his eye from where his 'lifeboat' struck him, but he declared Monday that he was 'almost 100 per cent.'


/dailymail.co.uk/