Unalaska, AK – Two men spent 52 hours drifting in the Bering Sea before being rescued by the Coast Guard on Sunday evening. Fifty-year-old Rod Whitehead of Adak and 35-year-old Bill Osterback of Sand Point hit a the motor of their 15-foot hard-bottomed zodiac on a rock when trying to pick up tools off of Amatignak Island, about 130 miles southwest of Adak. Their boat, the F/V Larissa M, was anchored in a cove. They were hired by a group of Bureau of Land Management surveyors who were working on remote islands and documenting old Aleut village sites. Whitehead said the boat lost power and the strong current pulled them away from the island at about 3 pm on Friday.

"The first 15 hours we paddled trying to get to land," he said. "But the currents were too strong and the places that we actually could have got to land were too dangerous. It definitely would have killed us on the rocks."

The four surveyors who chartered the boat were still on Amatignak Island. Whitehead said they used their low-power radio to contact the surveyors. No one was on the Larissa M.

"I called them on the radio and told them that they need to take materials off of the beach and make a raft" in order to get to the boat to call "the Coast Guard and get them to come."

The surveyors gathered together old nets, buoys, and boards from around the small island to build a make-shift raft and oars and to get to the boat and the VHF radio. It took them until almost 10 pm the next day. In the meantime, the two men tried to paddle to shore.

"You know, during the dark hours on the first night, both him and I were rowing and we'd be nodding off every now and as we were rowing. We were just exhausted by that point," Whitehead recalled while laughing at the memory.

They finally realized that they wouldn't be able to get the 1,500 pound zodiac to shore, so they tried sleeping in the boat. Both men were dehydrated and near hypothermic from the cold waves that filled the boat. The chances of running into another vessel in the Amchitka Pass were very slim, so they rationed their food.

"We had one bottle of water and we had one Cliff Bar. So Saturday we each ate a quarter Cliff Bar and had a couple sips of water and Sunday we did the same," he said.

Though the weather was cold enough to see their breath and they were soaked with water, Whitehead said they stayed positive.

"We saw a seagull land on the boat at one point and Bill and I both looked at him and thought about having some sea chicken, but we didn't."

On Sunday morning, they could hear a plane circling above them. When the fog finally cleared that afternoon, they waved anything they could in the air until the Coast Guard C-130 aircraft found them and dropped supplies, like a better radio, survival suits and food.

"It was like Christmas when we received that," Whitehead said.

By 8 pm Sunday evening a Coast Guard helicopter arrived at the scene and hoisted the two men to safety. The F/V Heritage headed from Adak to the Larissa M with a pilot to drive the boat and the four surveyors back to Adak. None of the surveyors could operate a boat.

Both Whitehead and Osterbeck were treated for dehydration at the Adak Clinic then released. Whitehead said both of his feet were numb but are feeling better. The Heritage reached the surveyors Monday afternoon and headed back toward Adak.