Deadliest Catch Captain: Scandies Rose Sinking Is ‘A Mystery,’ Shows None Are Safe From Tragedy

On the 16th season of Deadliest Catch, the sinking of the fishing vessel Scandies Rose took center stage for several episodes. While that particular boat was not outfitted with a crew for the show, it was well-known among the Alaska crab fishing vessels.

When it sank on New Year’s Eve 2019, Captain “Wild” Bill Wichrowski of the Summer Bay lost two close friends, Captain Gary Cobban Jr. and the ship’s engineer, Art Ganacias.

In an interview with TV Shows Ace, Wichrowski said that he and fellow captain Sig Hansen are still mystified about what happened because Scandies Rose had a very talented crew.

“We still don’t know what happened to the boat. It was adverse conditions.

The boat was actually built to crab. It wasn’t a makeover boat …

Scandies was a big machine and it was built and designed just to crab.

Gary was a phenomenal captain. He had a tremendous engineer.

I knew Art [Arthur Ganacias] really well for probably 25, 30 years. And he had deck hands on there that were some of the best in the fleet,” said Wichrowski.

“So it’s just a mystery. And as Sig Hansen and I have been talking lately, that it lets us all know that none of us are insulated from the possibility.”

Wichrowski said that losing Cobban Jr. was hard not only on himself but on his crew member, Landon Cheney, who was actually going to return to working on the Scandies Rose in 2019 but was convinced to stay with the Summer Bay.

“My friend was Gary, the captain.

Gary and I went back, I knew him for a million years … and two of [my crew] had worked on the boat,” said Wichrowski.

“Nick [McGlashan] was buddies with all those guys. It’s a small community to begin with, but, what was bizarre is Landon, my No. 2 guy, he was a little disgruntled last summer about some stuff that was going on and he was going to go back to the Scandies Rose just ’cause he worked on it before.

“So we kind of convinced him collectively convinced him to stay on our boat, but he essentially could have been on board the boat for that trip

. And that was the really heartfelt moment when I had to let him know because Gary was one of his mentors in life.”