MUKILTEO — Bobbing with the waves in frigid Possession Sound Friday evening, wearing cotton sweatpants, Doug Voice squinted his eyes to make sure the crusting salt and the cold were not playing a cruel trick on him.
One of the state ferry boats, the Cathlamet, had veered off course from its Mukilteo to Clinton run.
The ferry was coming toward him.
The 42-year-old Mukilteo man had been watching the ferries to keep track of time after a rogue wave threw him from his 12-foot Zodiac inflatable boat. Based on his knowledge of the 25-minute intervals of the ferry schedule, he figured he had been in the water more than one hour.
"I could tell I was starting to lose it a little bit," Voice said.
Fortunately for Voice, the vision was no hypothermic mirage. Someone had spotted his skipper-less Zodiac turning erratic circles and reported it to the Cathlamet just in time. The crew lowered a life raft similar to Voice’s and hauled him aboard the ferry, saving his life.
"It was a relief," Voice said one day later. "I knew my time was running out and it couldn’t have come at a better time."
Voice said a series of bad coincidences conspired against him on what was supposed to be a quick trip out to HatIsland.
The first, and most crucial, was forgetting to reattach a rope lanyard from the 25-horsepower outboard engine’s kill switch to his wrist. Had he done so, the engine would have shut off when he was thrown out. Then he could have climbed back in without fearing getting chopped by the engine’s propellers.
The second coincidence was two ill-timed distractions. He noticed the unattached lanyard and then lost his hat just before hitting the wave that sent him flying. Voice said he probably released his grip slightly from the tiller. When the wave hit, he lost his grip entirely. He estimated he was doing 35 mph, almost top speed for his boat.
"The tiller jerked violently to the right and I just catapulted over the starboard side of the boat," Voice said.
Once he recovered from the initial breathtaking shock of cold seawater, Voice’s initial reaction was to laugh at the absurdity of his predicament.
With its throttle still open, the Zodiac circled nearby with a mostly full gas tank.
But the lapse about the lanyard quickly became urgent.
Even though he had the good fortune to be wearing his life preserver and a warm Gore-Tex hunting jacket, he only had sweatpants on his legs.
The shoreline was a mile and a half away. An avid diver, he deemed it too far to swim before hypothermia would set in.
"I made several attempts to try to get back on the Zodiac," Voice said. "I thought that this is really my only opportunity to try to catch it, hang onto something and perhaps throw my body in."
But the boat was moving too fast to hold on, and the one time he managed to grab it, the boat started sucking him toward the propeller, so he let go.
"At that point, I thought the only thing I can hope is for it to run out of gas," Voice said. "I had some paddles, so I hoped to have enough energy to paddle it in."
He curled up into a ball to keep his body’s core temperature from dropping too much.
"I knew it was going to take a long time," he said. "There were times that I thought maybe I should just give up."
Voice said he quickly dismissed such ideas when he thought of his wife, Lika, and their son, Aaron.
"I thought, ‘I’m just going to live. I’m going to do whatever I have to to live.’"
On Sunday, Voice said he went to the Mukilteo ferry dock to personally thank the Cathlamet crew. He also left his phone number and asked them to help him find the person who first reported spotting him.
"I’m living proof that your life vests are your best friend," Voice said. "One guy on the ferry crew said, ‘He’s probably going to keep this vest the rest of his life.’ I am."
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
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