Skipper gives his account of a doomed boat's final hours

摘要

Joe Blake, the last captain of the F/V Katmai, sees the dying hours of his vessel like a movie playing over and over and over. "I rerun it in my mind, trying to see where I could have made a different decision. There's nothing that, knowing what I knew then, I would change," Blake told Pacific Fishing. Reruns won't bring the Katmai up from the depths of Amchitka Pass, nor will it bring back the seven men who died in the dark morning hours of Oct. 22. "All the guys closest to me on the boat are gone." That includes the chief engineer, Bob Davis, "a great engineer." The last time Blake saw Davis, the Katmai was listing in steep waves, the ship deep and sluggish, cold water bursting over the vessel.