04:55 PM PDT on Friday, July 21, 2006

By PAT DOORIS for kgw.com

Steve Harrison describes surviving 7 hours at sea after his boat sank 45 miles west of Tillamook.

In his own words, Harrison describes his harrowing ordeal to KGW-TV reporter Pat Dooris:

"Actually it was 75 degrees out there and Sandy and I were the only ones fishing...we were having a good time."

“Around 1 pm, water started seeping into floor boards, couldn’t see water cause floor boards on top…

“I noticed I had to turn bilge pump on...pushed very little water out. The pump wasn’t pumping. I looked over the side, the pump was pumping pretty well but not to dispatch the amount of water coming in!"

“Sandy fired up engine, trying to see if gravity would take water out. The engine died 10 seconds later. Sandy got on to radio to SOS. Steve went to get life jackets.

"And about that time the back of the boat just flooded out. Water just came up and over the back of the boat and slammed the cabin door shut with Sandy and me inside of it."

"And boom - it just sunk so quickly at a ninety degree that the door is now at my feet, and the bow is just tipped right out of the water."

"It stood on its tail within seconds. And Sandy and I were inside, and Sandy was at the top already. He'd worked his way to the top where the air was."

"The first thing that comes to your mind when you're inside a cabin like that locked in...there's nothing else that goes through your mind...its just... lets get the hell outa here!

"There's the front window of the boat and the side windows. We're looking at the side windows that have, thank God, wing nuts on them. And we undid the wing nuts and boom...water just flooded the cabin."

In 45 seconds, their boat sank.

"I tied myself to an ice chest. I thought if I die, at least I'll be connected to the ice chest. If I don’t make it at least I'll float around with this ice chest."

"I told Sandy, now that we're out of this cabin we're lucky, I mean we can’t ...we can’t die now...we got out of the cabin!

"Once we got out of the cabin, we thought we were home free! We'd been reborn! I mean this was wonderful. I couldn’t believe it!"

"I felt fishing lines around my legs and you could feel them scrape your pants and you had to make sure all those were out from around your legs."

"You got that breath of air when you come up and you're outside that boat maybe forty five miles in the middle of nowhere..it just dosent matter...you're alive!”

"You can’t tell if its cold because you're scared.”

The three pulled up on an ice chest to get their shoulders and chest out of the water to warm up.

“Once everybody's legs are up underneath there...you'd be surprised how much warmth you get just with everybody's legs being up under the ice chest."

"We thought we'd be in the water an hour...hour and a half. So we were just ready for a casual couple hour float."

45 minutes later, they were surrounded by dolphins.

"I didn’t know what they were...just a black shadow under me because I was fooling around with my tennis shoe."

“But I looked up and saw fins. ‘Bob’, I said, ‘do we have sharks around us?’ No, he said, those are dolphins.

“They were looking at us like..that's an odd way to be tuna fishing guys!”

They also saw buoys floating by, and whales breaching.

“I couldn’t believe there was that much activity.”

"There is a certain point, at eight o'clock, when it starts to get really dark and you're cold...and they keep passing you by helicopter or boat...there comes a point at eight o'clock or so...we only had another hour or forty five minutes...you start thinking...yah..we're just gonna drift out. We're just gonna drift."

The men also had to fend off Seagulls.

"They'd come up and peck ya unless you push them away."

"They're very brave. They don’t stay their distance---and float around you ---they'll come up and peck you in the head or peck you on the arm...you just have to scoot them away from you."

"I was about ready to get in the damn thing (the cooler.) Bob said no. You'll flip us all over. But it was looking bigger and bigger as we were in the water. I was thinking, you know, I think a guy could get in her for awhile."

Steve laughs in hindsight – because it was a twenty gallon cooler.

POSTSCRIPT TO INTERVIEW:

After seven hours in the sea, the men were spotted by a passing boat that radioed to a Coast Guard helicopter. Moments later, they were rescued from the Pacific.

Bob and Steve are doing fine; Sandy is still in the hospital with pneumonia.