Search And Rescue

An e-mail from a doomed fishing boat to a nearby vessel said it was taking on water in the rear, where the steering was housed, the Coast Guard said Thursday as it searched for two crew members. The Katmai sank early Wednesday in the icy waters off Alaska's Aleutian Islands with a crew of 11 aboard. Four survived in a life raft, and the bodies of five have been recovered. "We are devastated by what has happened," said Jeff DeBell, chief financial officer of Katmai Fisheries Inc.

Amid reports that poor communication and missed tips might have hampered the search for James Kim and his family in the southern Oregon wilderness, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski has ordered three state agencies to review the search process, and said he would appoint a task force to improve search-and-rescue efforts. A state sheriffs' organization also is conducting a review, as are federal agencies in charge of the land where Kim and his family were lost.

Relatives waiting for news about passengers from a missing jetliner wept after learning that Indonesian officials had erroneously reported that the Boeing 737's wreckage had been found and that a dozen people may have survived. A rescue official said the plane had probably crashed into the sea.

Ken Barnes Jr. put everything he had into his dream. The 47-year-old Newport Beach man sold his house and his swimming pool maintenance business and poured the proceeds into buying and equipping a 44-foot sailboat, dubbed Privateer, for a solo trip around the world. Barnes sailed out of Long Beach on Oct. 28, but on Wednesday was the subject of an intense search-and-rescue effort off the coast of Chile. Heavy storms near Cape Horn on the tip of South America crippled his boat.

Kati and James Kim ripped the visor mirror out of their car and tried directing reflected light at airplanes flying over them. They shouted and struggled in vain to relight a fire, in the rain, when a helicopter passed overhead. They hoped that somehow, someone would respond to the note they had written with a crayon and stuck in a zip-lock bag to a gate on a federal wilderness road in southern Oregon: "Low on Gas, Low on Food, 2 Babies."

Friends of a renowned Bay Area computer scientist whose sailboat vanished this week off the coast here pledged Friday to continue hunting for the missing sailor even though the U.S. Coast Guard has called off its search. Jim Gray, 63, a research pioneer and founder of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center, left San Francisco on Sunday aboard his 40-foot sailboat, Tenacious, to scatter his mother's ashes off the Farallon Islands, about 30 miles west of the city. He planned to be back that day.

The search for Jim Gray, a renowned Bay Area scientist missing at sea since late last month, was called off Friday. Friends of Jim, a group formed to look for the computer science pioneer, announced on a website that it was suspending its search for him. Gray set sail from San Francisco on Jan. 28 aboard his 40-foot sailboat, Tenacious, to scatter his mother's ashes in the ocean. He planned to return that day. The U.S.

Divers found the body of a crewman on a sunken fishing boat in Nantucket Sound but the search for two more men was called off because debris in the wreck made further dives too hazardous. The Lady of Grace, based in New Bedford, went down in an icy storm on Jan. 26 off Cape Cod. The body of the captain was found three days later.

Because of deteriorating ocean conditions, rescue teams temporarily suspended their search Thursday afternoon for a 61-year-old man who might be adrift in a skiff after his sailboat broke up on a Newport Beach jetty amid fierce winds. "As far as going into the water, it's too dangerous," Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, said of the search conducted since Wednesday by divers and Coast Guard ships.

Anxiety mounted here Sunday as rescue teams continued combing through the ruins of this country town in a longshot search for survivors, two days after a violent tornado took nine lives and leveled nearly everything. As more than 40 searchers scanned the heaps of bricks and wooden beams for signs of life, National Guard troops and state law enforcement officers barred families from returning to their homes, frustrating many survivors eager to reclaim scrapbooks and other priceless mementos.