After a day of battering by huge waves, the 36-foot gillnetter Andromeda sank silently into the Bering Sea two miles from land. Bo Oglesbee and Mitch Trujillo, the two-man crew, floated in the frigid, eerily quiet water and thought they were going to die.

“It seemed hopeless at the time. No one knew we were out there. The land was so far off in the distance we could barely see it on the horizon,” said Trujillo, 19.

At that crucial moment, the exhausted pair decided to fight rather than simply let the sea take them, said Trujillo, who returned home shortly after rescue from the June 5 shipwreck. He said few thoughts went through his head during the ordeal.

“I just didn’t want to give up. I wanted to try. I wanted to live. It was a life or death situation. It’s not a thing of thinking, it’s a thing of doing. It’s just instinct,” he said.

Trujillo and Oglesbee, both Anacortes residents, first bonded when they played on the Anacortes High School football team. They started fishing together professionally at 15, when Oglesbee was already a veteran of five summers of commercial fishing with his father, Scott. Trujillo wanted a taste of adventure and high pay.

“I just begged them and begged them until I could go. That was my first time. It sounded like a lot of fun and the money is good,” he said.

A high school student can earn anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000 fishing in a summer, depending on the catch, he said. They fished together two years, then Trujillo took a break until Oglesbee took charge of a family boat this year.

“Bo was running a boat and he needed a deckhand,” Trujillo said.

They headed to Port Moller, a small Alaskan fishing town about 600 miles southwest of Anchorage, where they painted Andromeda and made sure she was in tiptop condition.

“We were there for two weeks. On our first day after we left Port Moller is when we sank,” Trujillo said.

Misjudging the weather was their big mistake.

“We knew the weather was going to be rough,” Trujillo said.

But they had no idea how rough. Oglesbee gained confidence from the fact that they set out with two other boats.

“If I’d give any advice to anyone out there it’s travel with trusted people and make sure you’re ready for the weather,” he said. “The only thing we could have done differently is we should have waited for the storm to go through.”

After leaving the sheltered area, they were battered by wind and big waves, coming from the north, which hit their starboard side. Tossed around, they worked hard steering into the seas.

“All day me and Bo were getting thrown all over the place. Radios were falling all over the place,” Trujillo said.

After a few hours both were seasick.

“That didn’t help anything. I didn’t eat that day. I just had one bottle of water,” he said.

Oglesbee managed to eat a sandwich, but he got no sleep that night. Trujillo got about four hours.

As they worked through the waves, the other boats left them.

“We fell behind. The weather got a lot rougher the farther we got down the coast,” he said.

Then a giant wave came in suddenly.

“Sometimes a wave comes out of nowhere and just hits you broadside before you can steer into it. It hit us broadside,” Trujillo said. “It tipped the boat on its side and a bunch of water came in. At that time we called the mayday.”

It was about noon June 5. “We got out our survival suits,” he said.

Within a few minutes they had everything in order and the bilge pump was clearing out the water.

“We told the Coast Guard we were OK and canceled the mayday,” he said.

They continued for much of the day before disaster struck.

“Like four hours later we took another wave on the starboard side. It blew out the windows on the starboard side. Water was pouring in,” he said. “Our engine room was completely filled with water. The engine died. Our electronics were completely dead.”

This time they could not call for help.

“Bo had fallen into the bunks into the water. All I saw was his arm. I pulled him out of the water and told him to put his survival suit on fast,” Trujillo said.

More big waves followed.

“Bo jumped out of the port window. He thought the wave was going to capsize the boat,” he said.

But the boat stayed upright.

“He got back on the back of the boat and started putting his suit on,” he said.

Trujillo went back into the boat to find flares.

“I found the flare gun and shot one flare off, but no one saw it. No one was around us. Shirley May and Stepping Stone were about three miles ahead of us,” he said.

Andromeda went down fast.

“By the time we got our survival suits on the whole bow of the boat was submerged,” he said. “It was pretty cold. At that point we just decided to get off the boat,” Trujillo said.

It was 4 p.m. They were two miles from the Aleutian Islands — away from shore because breakers are worse in the shallow areas.

“They could totally capsize the boat,” he said.

At that point Oglesbee thought they were doomed. Trujillo said he encouraged his friend.

“Me and Bo, we looked at each other and decided we might as well give it our all. No point giving up out here,” he said.

A life ring surfaced. “We went for the life ring. We both held onto a side of the life ring,” he said.

Waves were big, 20-footers, he said. They worked out a rhythm to their swimming and watched for the big waves, which went right over them.

“We had to make sure to know when the breakers were coning so we could hold our breath,” he said.

Although land was barely visible in the distance, they kept going.

“We were talking to each other. I was just trying to motivate Bo to keep going on. He was pretty tired,” he said.

At one point he told Oglesbee that the disaster would make a good tale.

“I said ‘This is going to be a good story.’ Bo looked at me disgusted,” he said.

Trujillo said he thought about what he learned from survival expert Bear Grylls on the Discovery Channel’s “Man vs. Wild” program: “As long as you keep your body moving your temperature will stay high,” he said. “I was warm in my survival suit.”

Oglesbee was struggling and cold. Although a survival suit covers everything except a person’s face, his was damaged.

“Bo had a hole in his survival suit,” Trujillo said.

The weather actually helped them reach an island.

“The tide and the wind were pushing us into the shore, so we got lucky. Insanely lucky,” he said. “It was definitely a miraculous experience.”

They were cramping badly by the time they dragged themselves ashore.

“We were really stoked when we got to land,” he said.

The first thing they did was look for shelter from the wind, which was blowing at 30 to 40 mph.

“We went behind a hill and dug out a little bed,” he said. They covered themselves with moss. But Trujillo didn’t feel safe.

“I didn’t want to lay there anymore. I felt like I was dying there,” he said. “I told Bo I was going to do a perimeter check.”

About a mile away he found pallets and some wreckage from their boat, including rope, flax seed and a box of goldfish crackers. They saved the crackers for the next day. Trujillo fueled himself with two mouthfuls of flax seed.

“It helped keep me going,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bo found fresh water.

“Bo said we’ll go look for a better spot to camp for the night,” he said. “Me and Bo, we built a shelter. We filled the pallets with moss for insulation.... We drank fresh water from the lake. We just huddled for warmth,” he said.

By then a Coast Guard helicopter was looking for them.

“Bo’s dad called in. No one had heard from us. He was worried and told the Coast Guard they’d better look for us,” he said.

The search started at about 9:30 p.m. The Coast Guard Cutter Mellon, which was on routine patrol in the Bering Sea, launched a HH-65 Dolphin helicopter.

“We heard it. Hypothermia was starting to set in. We were hallucinating, talking to people who weren’t there,” Trujillo said.

With frozen, painful muscles, they stiffly got up just too late to flag the helicopter.

“It went right over us,” he said.

But Trujillo was ready when it returned. He waited, doing jumping jacks to stay warm.

“I put a huge SOS in the sand so they’d notice us,” he said.

It returned, following along the shoreline in a search for the fishermen.

“I was spinning the life ring around. It was pretty crazy. Bo told me I saved his life,” he said.

Oglesbee was hauled up in a basket first, then Trujillo. The helicopter took them to Cold Bay Clinic, where they were treated for mild hypothermia.

After a weekend off, Oglesbee went back out fishing with his father.

“He’s fishing on the Angelina. He’ll be there until August or September,” Trujillo said.

However, Trujillo was unable to continue.

“I don’t have any fishing gear. All my stuff sank,” he said.

He figures it will be covered by insurance, but that takes time. For now he’s back home with his parents in Anacortes and looking for a job.

Trujillo also has a new challenge to meet — replacing his General Education Development diploma with a state or high school diploma. He no longer sees fishing as a long-term career.

“I’d go back, but I don’t see my life going that way, he said. “I’d like to join the Coast Guard. Seeing the joy the guys had from saving us was really inspirational.”

Trujillo said he gained something else from the experience.

“Bo and I are closer. Instead of close friends he’s more like a brother,” he said.