Good Samaritan Rescue Defies the Odds; Man Pulled From Humboldt Bay by Fellow Fishermen

Posted: February 14, 2012  |  By: Thadeus Greenson [The Times-Standard]

Having worked as a commercial fisherman his entire life, Carl Crittenden knew just how close he was.

Crittenden, 60, of Eureka, had been swimming toward shore in Humboldt Bay for about 40 minutes after his boat capsized Sunday afternoon. Fully clothed, he began struggling, and his drive to reach shore began to wane.

”I was going,” Crittenden recalled Monday in a phone interview from his room at St. Joseph Hospital. “I was right there at the end. When I started feeling warm and not caring, that's when I saw the boat. It was quite a ways away, but I had just enough left to scream bloody murder.

” It turns out Crittenden had just enough left to catch the attention of Richard McMahn and Brandon Trone, who had gotten a late start on the day and were heading out the Samoa channel after launching at the Fields Landing boat ramp, intent on dropping a few crab pots and seeing what they could catch. While McMahn and Trone heard Crittenden's screams, they couldn't place where they came from at first.

Trone said it was his friend McMahn who heard the screams, thinking they were bird calls at first.

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