ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A man found floating atop a boat in Lake Iliamna three days after the vessel capsized in stormy waters was not wearing a life jacket. It may be what saved his life.
Lance Hobson, 26, of Nondalton was making a 40-mile trip from Igiugig to Kokhanok with three friends Friday night when the anchor fell from the bow and caught the lake bottom. The boat’s bow submerged and caused the boat to flip at least twice.
He surfaced to find the flat-bottomed boat capsized and his friends clinging to its underside, trying to stay afloat in the frigid Alaska water.
Riding with Hobson were friends Clinton Abarca, 26, of Nondalton; Chad Rawls, 23, of Iliamna; and Vince Rickteroff, 19, of Nondalton.
“We were all sitting on top of the boat and we were all praying that we didn’t die,” Hobson said.
From his hospital room in Anchorage on Wednesday, Hobson told the Associated Press that he was the only one of the four men who was not wearing a life jacket. Had he been, he probably would have swam off toward the shore with the others and disappeared too, he said.
“I was really thinking about trying it,” he said. “But I knew I wouldn’t have made it even with a life jacket.”
Troopers first received a call Sunday afternoon that the boat was overdue on Alaska’s largest lake, which covers more than 1,000 square miles and is about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage.
An aerial search began immediately. At its height, the search included at least five government aircraft along with boats and ATVs that searched the shoreline.
But while the planes circled overhead, Hobson said he saw them in the distance, unable to get their attention.
“I was so cold I couldn’t even flick my lighter,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it. I was really hallucinating.”
At times, he said, he couldn’t tell if the planes he saw were real or not. Other times, he imagined his friends were still with him on the boat.
All his survival gear – sleeping bags, a first-aid kit, food and warm clothing – had fallen into the murky abyss, and with only the wet clothes on his back, he was fighting a losing battle with hypothermia.
Hobson says he kept going by thinking about his friends and family, including his 5-year-old daughter.
“It was scary,” he said. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to anybody.”
A search aircraft located Rickteroff’s body Tuesday evening floating with a life jacket on about three miles from the southwest lake shore. The others remain missing, though troopers have called off the active search and have presumed them dead, said spokeswoman Megan Peters.
Water temperatures in the lake generally hover in the upper 40s.
“After being in the water for that long, there’s not much chance of finding them alive,” she said. “At this point we’re looking for bodies rather than survivors.”
Peters said police suspect alcohol may have been a factor in the accident.
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