A night of heroism and tragedy on the dark seas.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

NORTH BEND - Capt. Dennis Coolie had just finished his watch, on a cold black night last December.

The 51-year-old veteran crawled into his bunk on the Primo Brusco, a 100-foot tugboat pulling a 260-foot barge with a million board feet of lumber down the Pacific Coast. The boat was headed to Eureka, Calif., from Aberdeen, Wash.

Two hours into a deep sleep, Coolie awoke with a start, to a frightened first mate, Monty Nelson.

The stern was taking on water - lots of it, Nelson reported.

What happened next is a story of tragedy and heroism, both of which were remembered Wednesday in North Bend at a ceremony attended by the second-highest- ranking member of the U.S. Coast Guard. In all, 20 members received medals.

It was a day of recognition for valor during a night of triumph and loss.

Unexpected storm

The weather reports for Dec. 29 weren't out of the ordinary: 10- to 12-foot seas with 25- to 30-mph winds. That's about as good as it gets in midwinter off the Oregon Coast. But as night wore on, the weather changed drastically. As Coolie plugged along 20 miles southwest of Florence, winds reached 70 mph, and 25-foot waves were crashing onto the deck. Coolie stopped trying to drive through the storm. He slowed the boat down, just enough to stay in one spot, with hopes of riding it out.

At 10:30 p.m., an alarm went off, indicating flooding in the rear compartment. The crew solved the problem, and at midnight, Coolie went to sleep. He wasn't out for long.

Two and a half hours later, Coolie awoke to Nelson's ominous report and the fierce swagger of the tug.

"I got up and almost fell backwards," Coolie remembers.

Immediately, the captain rang the alarm and told the rest of his five-member crew to don survival suits. Then he called the Coast Guard to say that he was taking on water and to report his position. The tug was starting to list to the starboard side, and sink.

That was the last communication Coolie sent from the Primo Brusco.

Abandon ship

The water came in faster, drowning out the generator that gave the boat its electrical power. When that happened, the harried crew could see nothing but the inky night. The boat was tossing about in raging surf like driftwood. For a few seconds, Coolie tried to right the ship, but it was futile. He prepared his crew to abandon.

With survival suits zipped tightly over their heads, the crew was ready. But Coolie couldn't communicate with them without pulling his own hood down, allowing the thundering waves to fill the inside of his own suit with 54-degree water. The crew's task was to dislodge the tug's lifeboat, a nearly impossible task because the raft was on the side of the tug that was quickly sinking.

At first, they tried unhooking the lifeboat. But with the raft partially submerged and waves pounding, the men could only retreat to port side, and wait for their ship to sink deeper. Once completely underwater, such a lifeboat will automatically release.

As they waited, another colossal wave blasted the boat. When it cleared, Michael Jensen was in the water, and Monty Nelson was jumping in after him.

No one knows why.

Jensen had a life ring on, and his survival suit zipped up, so he would float. Nelson was wearing just the suit, which would keep him buoyant. But both men were quickly being swept far from the tugboat.

"Take care of yourself," the captain shouted toward a frantic Nelson. "Put your arms and legs out. Get your emergency light blinking. The Coast Guard is on its way. Don't fight it. Just relax."

Coolie and the crew waited on the sinking tug until finally the lifeboat sprang free. Chief engineer Chris Peterson and deckhand Mitch Russes scrambled into the boat, leaving Coolie as the last member aboard the doomed tug, which was seconds away from going down in more than 500 feet of water. He jumped, aiming just to the side of the life boat, but missed, and struck his shoulder on part of the Primo Brusco. The injury left him unable to lift his right arm.

The men on the raft yelled and blew whistles, but the sound was lost to the wind and crashing sea. With waves steadily pounding the life raft, there seemed little hope of finding Nelson and Jensen.

"We were at the mercy of the ocean," Coolie said.

Two men sat at each end of the raft and one positioned himself in the middle. As each wave struck it, the men stiffened to keep the raft stretched out and flat so it wouldn't flip.

They did this for hours while waiting for help - unsure if rescuers were even on the way. Coolie had radioed the Coast Guard and the tug had an emergency locator beacon rigged to transmit a distress signal if the craft submerged or capsized. The signal helps rescuers zero in on the boat's location. Coolie had tried to tear it from the ship to keep it with him, but he was unable to.

So they waited, constantly bailing water. Coolie, soaking wet inside his survival suit, was trying to figure out why his boat had sunk. His two less-experienced crew members were in shock, vomiting, repeatedly asking "Where are they? Are they coming? Do they know we're out here?"

It went on that way for three hours. All the while, there was no sign of the lost men.

"We kept waiting for daylight," Coolie said.

Coast Guard to the rescue

Meanwhile, Coast Guard members were preparing for a rescue, by helicopter and boat. Both endeavors were risky, to say the least. The 47-foot motor lifeboat at the Umpqua River station is designed for rough seas. It's self-righting and self-bailing.

But the boat has limits. With winds of 80 mph, surf at 20 feet and seas at 30 feet, it's a tough call to venture out.

"I wouldn't have gone," said Petty Officer Chuck Chavtor.

But Petty Officer Ward Halstead, with 23 years of experience piloting boats through heavy seas, decided to take the risk.

As Halstead readied his crew just before 5 a.m., a helicopter from Air Station North Bend raced out to the Primo Brusco, and saw the strobe lights on the life raft. For several minutes, the chopper hovered above the boat, trying to land a basket next to it.

But the seas were furious, the air whipping the helicopter around like a kite. It was too risky to keep trying. So Coolie and his desperate crew members watched as it buzzed away.

Not far off, the men watched a second helicopter drop a basket, a sign that rescuers had found at least one of their lost mates.

Indeed, rescuers had spotted Jensen's strobe. He was still alive, curled up in a fetal position to retain heat.

Petty Officer Roman Baligad, an aviation survival technician, was lowered down a rope. He intended to swoop down and clip Jensen onto himself. Then together they would be lifted to safety. But the weather was too powerful. For 12 minutes, Baligad swung violently back and forth, waves pummeling him from all sides. He couldn't get close enough to Jensen. The aircraft's controls started beeping. It was low on fuel.

Suddenly, without warning, Baligad disconnected himself and plunged into the raging ocean. He swam over to Jensen, flung him into a rescue basket and jumped in next to him. They were safely on board the chopper. One crew member was safe.

Four were still out there.

Dicey seas

The toughest area for a water rescue by the Umpqua River station crew is where the river meets the sea. That's where the surf crashes toward land, and the water is unpredictable.

"A 20-foot breaker dumps 1,500 tons of water on you at 30 miles per hour," Halstead said Wednesday.

As rookie officers vomited, 40-year-old Halstead charted his course, finding the best point to reach the ocean.

Finally, just before 7 a.m., they reached the lifeboat, and from there on, Halstead says, the work was easy. They idled up to the raft and the three weary crew members hopped on board.

Nelson was still missing.

Tragic ending

On New Year's Eve, two days after he plunged into the sea, Monty Nelson, the last crew member of the Primo Brusco, turned up dead, miles away from where his boat had sunk.

Investigators are still piecing together what happened to the tug, why Nelson decided to jump and why his strobe light never activated.

On Wednesday, the heroes of the dramatic rescue earned some of the highest medals the Coast Guard gives out, for risking their lives to save others.

Capt. Coolie arrived via tugboat, headed to San Francisco. He is no stranger to loss, he said. Two of his brothers and a sister have died, one of AIDS, one in a hit-and-run accident, and one drowned in a swimming pool.

"Me and death don't get along very well," he said.

Coolie has been back to this part of the ocean a few times since the sinking of the Primo Brusco.

The death of Monty Nelson continues to haunt him.

"I think all the time about what I could have done differently to save him," Coolie says. "This is something that doesn't go away."