Somber remembrances.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

TILLAMOOK - Tamara Buell was ready to die.

Her slender frame flung from the bridge of the Taki-Tooo charter boat and thrashed by the raging surf, the 22-year-old deckhand had no strength left. She was barely conscious. She was hypothermic, disoriented and overcome with fear.

And then Buell looked around. At the other people, alive and dead, bobbing up and down in the 52-degree water; at the masses rushing down the beach to find survivors.

From some reserve deep within, she gathered courage: She couldn't let them down, she thought. She couldn't put her family through the grief that so many others now face in the aftermath of the deadly accident that claimed 11 others.

She couldn't give up.

"I started thinking about everybody back on shore. I didn't want to put them through that," Buell said. "So I just got mad and started swimming."

Buell narrated her account of the tragedy with gripping detail Monday through a steady stream of tears as her parents stood by her side at a news conference in Tillamook. Her father, Mick Buell, runs Garibaldi Charters, which owns the Taki-Tooo.

She was among eight people who survived the wreck of the 32-foot boat just after leaving Tillamook Bay on a fishing expedition Saturday morning. Nine people died, including the ship's captain, and two are still missing and presumed dead.

The accident is the deadliest that veteran seagoers remember in recent times along the Oregon Coast. Eight persons died after the Pearl C charter fishing boat sank while under tow at the mouth of the Columbia River back in September 1976.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board are continuing to interview survivors and inspect the Taki-Tooo to determine what went wrong.

Buell already had talked to investigators, but decided to give a public account to help people understand what happened. It was clearly not an easy story to tell.

The charter's passengers, eager for a day of rockfish hunting, climbed aboard the boat at 6 a.m., a typical starting time, Buell said.

Capt. Doug Davis gave a safety orientation, she said, telling passengers that the most important thing for them to know was where to find life jackets, the preserver and the inflatable life raft - released automatically in the event of an emergency.

No one donned the life jackets, she said.

As the boat approached the notorious bar at the mouth of the bay - known for its high swells, shallow depths, tricky currents and deteriorated jetties - Davis waited for a break in the waves, Buell said. Three other boats crossed safely.

Much the same way a surfer ponders the time between sets, so does a boat captain, often watching three or four series of waves come in to estimate how much time there is to power the boat through the surf before a new set of breakers comes pounding in.

For 45 minutes, Davis idled, looking for just the right route, Buell said. Part of what makes the Tillamook Bar so dangerous is the geography of several "holes" where the confluence of five rivers traveling through the bay meet ocean waters.

The danger level was high enough Saturday that the Coast Guard had restricted recreational vessels and uninspected commercial boats from crossing the bar. The Taki-Tooo, having passed its inspections, was cleared. The decision was in Davis' hands.

"He's made that crossing a thousand times," Buell said.

Eventually, as other captains radioed back that they'd made it through OK, Davis saw his opening and powered up the boat close to the North Jetty, she said.

The Taki-Tooo was pointed into the breaking surf - which increases the chance that the boat could ride it out, she said. But then a 10-foot wave turned the boat sideways, leaving it helpless as more huge crests hit.

Seconds later, a 15-foot wave lashed into the Taki-Tooo's port side, flipping it over, Buell said. Passengers on deck were thrown into the churning surf and those in the cabin tumbled from wall to wall like clothes in a washing machine.

Buell was hurled into the water, but then bobbed up. She was able to take a quick look around. The life boat popped out and inflated, as expected, and some were able to reach it, she said.

But she was loaded down with heavy rain gear, boots and a sweatshirt. She had to get free of them or face no chance of swimming to safety.

And the waves kept coming, pounding everyone, pushing them down, forcing them to gulp salt water.

In the seconds that followed, Buell said she isn't sure what happened. She was fading in and out, trying to swim, figure out where she was. She was losing hope, preparing herself for death.

That's when she got mad, she said. She swam, getting closer and closer to shore, and then stopped again, exhausted, barely able to move.

Buell felt her foot hit something, and she realized it was sand. She was close to shore.

"But I couldn't walk," she said, "so I let the waves push me in. Then I crawled. And someone dragged me up on to shore."

With that, Buell was among the rescued.

Earlier Monday, a dozen family members and friends of Tim Albus, one of the missing men, combed through the beach grass at Barview Jetty County Park and then climbed up and down the rocks along the North Jetty.

A longtime friend of Albus', Paul La Freniere of Salem, said Tim's wife, Tammy, came from Madras with every intention of finding her husband alive.

"Somebody in the group had a vision," said La Freniere, who met Albus through the Promise Keepers, a Christian men's organization. "They saw him laying right out in the open somewhere, curled up like he was cold."

But La Freniere knew the search would be futile. He said he hoped Tammy Albus could accept that eventually.

"He's probably in a lot better place than we are," La Freniere said.

As the family worked over the landscape, the tide washed away evidence of the tragedy, wiping away tracks of vehicles that sped down the beach Saturday and the ditch made as the Taki-Tooo was dragged away from the water.

But a striking reminder remained: 11 crude crosses with red ribbons attached, nailed against a long board lined with calla lillies. Each cross had a word on it, spelling out a message that is sure to be repeated in the coming weeks. It calls for dredging and jetty repair at the dangerous bar, where only expert fishermen navigate a hole called the "middle grounds."

"Fix the jettys dredge the middle grounds," the message reads.

CAPTION(S):

Family and friends of Tim Albus pause while searching the south Tillamook Jetty on Monday. Albus is one of two people missing after the Taki-Tooo charter fishing boat capsized Saturday morning when it was hit by a series of tall waves. Eleven crosses stand at Tillamook Bay to symbolize the 11 dead and missing passengers and crew after the Taki-Tooo capsized.