‘We’re sinking:’ Juneau family’s fast actions save lives at sea

At first, Mike Carriker thought the whale-watching boat ahead of him in Favorite Channel had stopped on Sunday to watch some whales. Then he realized the passengers ahead of him were waving their arms frantically, calling for help.

“When you’re put in a situation like that, you don’t have a lot of opportunity to think, you have to act,” Carriker, 50, said.

Carriker was on board his boat “Sea Ya” with his wife, Erin, and their three young children, ages 11, 7 and 3. They had been keeping their distance from the 35-foot whale-watching boat “Big Red,” operated by Dolphin Jet Boat Tours, to maintain smoother waters. Suddenly, they needed to close that gap because something, although Carriker didn’t know what, was wrong.

“We realized we had to hurry, but we couldn’t go too fast. You don’t also want to hit something,” Carriker said. “People were yelling, ‘We’re sinking.’”

It was just Carriker’s guess at the time that the tour boat hit something in the water, but he was right. A crew member from Big Red later confirmed that around noon the boat had struck a reef, which caused them to take on water.

When the two boats were close enough, Erin Carriker began directing the tour passengers onto her family’s boat, asking them to stand in certain spots so that they wouldn’t tip over. The Carriker’s boat is only supposed to carry approximately 10 people, meaning with the Carriker family alone, it was already at half capacity. There were 18 people on the sinking Big Red.

“At this point, we don’t know how many people they had,” Carriker said. “We have to be careful about what we take as far as weight distribution. If we’re not careful, we (could) have two boats in distress.”

[Whale-watching boat sinks, 18 rescued]

Helping the Carrikers manage the stressful situation was Mike Clasby, a crew member and naturalist aboard Big Red. As he worked alongside the boat’s captain Kimball Ho passing out life jackets and moving passengers off the sinking boat, he was shouting orders to Erin.

“She saved our lives,” Clasby said. “That little lady was on the bow when they came over, and I just started barking orders at her because some series of events needed to happen in a certain order or nothing was going to work, and she was so responsive.”

Although Erin worked with Clasby to get the passengers on the boat as quickly as possible, Big Red was under water in five minutes from the time the two boats met and only 14 passengers made it on the boat. Three others, Clasby and two others, were hanging onto the side of the boat. Captain Kimball was in the open water, unable to get to the boat in time because he waited until everyone else had exited.

Clasby said Kimball acted cool and collected, never screaming for help and seeming distressed. When someone aboard Sea Ya threw Clasby a life ring, he said he threw it back, even though he was hanging onto the boat’s anchor, because the captain needed it more.

A small skiff with an unidentified couple eventually came by and picked up Kimball before an Allen Marine tour boat, St. Herman, was able to answer the distress call and take all the passengers back downtown. The Allen Marine crew immediately took over the situation, and also aided the wet passengers, giving them dry clothes and coffee.

During a phone call Monday, Clasby spoke calmly about the sinking ship, his voice only breaking with emotion when he remembered the positive moments of “community coming together” to help. This summer is only Clasby’s second as a crew member for the whale-watching tour group. And while he said he was still tired from the day’s event, he was already gearing up a boat identical to Big Red to go on a whale-watching tour again Monday.

“No better time to go than today,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

Cindy Rowe, 51, was a cruise ship passenger aboard Big Red Sunday and on Monday from Ketchikan, she said she wasn’t feeling quite the same next-day confidence as Clasby.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Rowe said. “I couldn’t sleep last night. … I had to cancel a flight over the fjords today with my husband.”

Rowe, from Maryland, is on her first trip through Alaska with her husband Tim and a group of friends. She said she doesn’t think she’ll every be able to board a boat again. She said the incident ruined her trip and she can’t imagine enjoying another day of the cruise after the experience that she worried for a moment would be her last. Aside from the still-present fear she was feeling, she said she is filled with gratitude for the family that stopped to rescue her, her husband and all the passengers.
“I want them to know that we owe our lives to them,” she said, crying.

The Carrikers returned to Auke Bay after the incident while the rescued passengers headed to Allen Marine Tours dock downtown near the Wharf. Mike Carriker said he and his wife stayed up that night, asking themselves over and over if the other could believe what had just happened, with scenes of the event replaying in their minds after their adrenaline finally began to fade. He said he was impressed with how his family handled themselves, especially his children. Only briefly did his 3-year-old daughter begin to cry during the commotion, but a passenger they picked up helped to calm her. Another, after the rescue was over and they more or less felt they were safe, started a group prayer.

“A gentleman said, ‘I don’t know what denomination everybody is, but I think it’s a good time to say a prayer,’” Carriker said.

A mystery from the day remains — who were the good Samaritans driving the metal skiff that picked up the captain? Clasby said he and the others involved want to know so they can thank them personally, and give them proper recognition publicly.

“It wasn’t just us out there,” he said.

• Contact reporter Paula Ann Solis at 523-2272 or paula.solis@juneauempire.com.

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