Coming Back Alive

A true-life glimpse of the dangerous work regularly performed by the US Coast Guard Search and Rescue service. This is an account of the rescue of the fishing crew from the "La Conte" as it sank off the coast of Alaska in 90-foot seas, one January night in 1998. On the night of January 31 1998, the fishing vessel La Conte took on water and sank off the coast of Sitka, Alaska, in what was to be the worst storm in the state's history. Abandoning ship, the five-man crew desperately clung to life - and each other - in ferocious 90 foot seas, and freezing water. All would surely have perished were it not for the efforts of the Coast Guard Search and Rescue teams who flew their choppers into the heart of the storm with little hope of rescuing anyone.