TOP FIN
Master Chief Gelakoska’s
Tales of courage and chaos
Author ASMC George Cavallo #122
Contributing Author ASMCM Darell Gelakoska #281
CHAPTER 9
Riding the Vomit Comet
Riding the Vomit Comet
The wind at Coast Guard Air Station Astoria wasn’t just blowing—it was a full-blown tantrum. Sleet, salt spray, and sideways rain slammed into the hangar doors like the sky had a vendetta. Darell stood next to the HH-52 helicopter, questioning his life choices and, more urgently, the existence of a merciful God.
The HH-52 was a plucky little rescue bird—short-range, amphibious, and about as aerodynamic as a flying toolbox. But for all its limitations, it was ready. Its rotors chopped through the mist like a buzz saw through fog. Darell, fresh off the ice-crusted tarmac of Traverse City, had washed up in Astoria looking for a reset. He found it—in the form of hypothermic fishermen, sideways rain, and adrenaline-laced rescues over cold, black water.
Early spring on the Oregon coast is brutal, but that night, the Pacific unleashed hell.
The storm rolled in off the ocean like a black freight train—hammering Seaside and Astoria with torrential rain, sleet, and 70-mph winds that shrieked like tortured metal. It was the kind of night Coasties prayed the Search and Rescue alarm would stay silent.
But around midnight, fate came calling.
Far offshore, 70 miles southwest of Astoria, a Norwegian freighter—the Astrid Bakke—was being thrashed by 40-foot seas. A crewman had fallen down a ladder, suffered serious injuries, and was now fighting for his life. The mayday call crackled into RCC (Rescue Coordination Center) Seattle. They scanned the charts and saw who was closest.
Moments later, the SAR alarm blared through the base like a lightning strike.
Darell didn’t hesitate. He was out of his bunk, heart hammering, suiting up in his wetsuit and flight helmet, grabbing his EMT kit and stokes litter. No radar. No backup. Just raw Coast Guard grit.
As the hangar doors opened, the storm roared in full fury. Sheets of rain slashed sideways as the ground crew towed out the HH-52 amphibious helicopter. LCDR Dave Corson and LT Strong were already in Ops—grim-faced, professional, and fully aware they were about to fly into the worst conditions imaginable.
There was no turning back.
Darell gave the aircraft a final walk-around, said his silent prayer, and climbed in. The HH-52 was underpowered and outdated by modern standards, but it was all they had. At full throttle, it gave them just three hours of flight time and a top speed of 109 knots.
They were going to need every bit of it.
As they lifted off into the night, the aircraft bucked violently in the wind, shaking like it was trying to shake them out. Darell watched the pilots from the cabin—white-knuckled on the controls, straining to keep the bird level in gale-force winds. There was no radar, just a vague heading and the faint hope of radio contact with the ship.
“Astrid Bakke, this is Coast Guard Rescue Helicopter 1416… come in on channel 16…”
For over an hour, there was nothing but static and darkness. Then finally, a faint voice crackled back. They had a position. The chase was on.
Visibility was barely a quarter mile, and the rain came sideways. Then—there it was. The Astrid Bakke heaved into view through the storm at their one o’clock position—500 feet of steel being tossed like a toy in 40-foot waves. Its deck bristled with stanchions and rigging, a deadly obstacle course of wires and metal.
Darell clipped in his gunner’s belt, slid open the cabin door, and was hit with sleet and a blast of icy air. The deck below was chaos—pitching, rolling, no flat surface to be seen. Corson’s hoist brief was short and sharp:
“If we lose power, we’ll crash into the water on the left—away from the ship—to give ourselves a chance of survival.”
Darell’s job was to get that litter down to the crewman. But the first drop was a disaster—the trail line caught wind and whipped dangerously close to the tail rotor. Abort. He added more weight. Still no luck. The storm slammed into them, and the helo dropped like a stone—just 20 feet above the churning sea before Corson clawed it back into the air.
It was sheer chaos. Sleet and rain lashed Darell’s face. His mouth was so dry from adrenaline he could barely speak, his throat parched after nearly being thrown into the ocean. On the third attempt, again the helicopter was hit by a downdraft that nearly drove them into the water. Darell couldn’t believe they were still alive. He whispered a prayer for help.
After five minutes of hell, they managed to get the trail line to the deck crew. Darell began lowering the stokes litter—but another savage gust ripped the line from the deckhand’s hands, sending it flying free. No more trail line. No more weight bags. Nothing left.
But Darell didn’t flinch.
He gave the order to hold steady. Without the trail line to guide the litter, he had to free-drop the hook—coiling the cable in his hands and praying it didn’t get caught in the rigging below. He let it go as soon as Corson moved over the ship.
It landed—miraculously—clean on deck. The deck crew loaded the injured man into the litter while Darell held his breath. Time dragged. Ten agonizing minutes later, they signaled they were ready.
Now came the real test.
Darell began lifting the litter. It immediately swung wide in the gale, smashing toward the ship’s rails—certain to hit and kill the man inside. The deck crew lunged and caught it just in time, muscling it over the rail and clear. Then the litter swung and spun violently beneath the aircraft like a wrecking ball.
Darell waited. Watched. Then, when the litter finally lined up under the door, he reached down, one arm extended into the chaos, and grabbed it mid-spin—pulling the litter inside with pure adrenaline and force of will.
The cabin door slammed shut behind him.
They were safe.
Darell threw a navigation bag under the patient’s feet to treat for shock, slapped an oxygen mask on him, and took vitals. The crewman was alive. Barely. But alive—and so was the crew.
They headed home.
Corson flew them back through the storm—completely spent, his hands cramping on the stick. When they landed at the hospital in Astoria, the entire crew was drenched and trembling with exhaustion. Darell had to help Corson out of the pilot seat and gave him a big hug, thanking him for bringing them home alive—they had nothing left in the tank.
As the rotors slowed, line crew stared at the battered aircraft in stunned silence.
No one else would have made that flight.
In the days that followed, Darell expected the crew to receive the medals they deserved. Corson had saved their lives with unmatched flying skill. Darell had executed a rescue that most wouldn’t have even attempted. But when the awards came down, Corson received an Air Medal. Darell and LT Strong each received Coast Guard Commendation Medals.
When he saw Corson hadn’t been given the Distinguished Flying Cross, Darell stepped into the XO’s office and spoke plainly.
“Sir, I don’t want to overstep, but Corson earned the DFC out there. He kept that aircraft flying when most pilots wouldn’t have even launched. If that doesn’t meet the standard for a Distinguished Flying Cross, I’m not sure what did.”
The XO nodded.
“You’re not the first to say that, Darell. I’ll take it back up the chain.”
But nothing ever happened.
For Darell, medals didn’t matter. Survival did. That night wasn’t about recognition—it was about grit, instinct, and guts. It was about a team of Coast Guardsmen who stared death in the face—and didn’t blink.
And for Darell, it was another mission completed. Another life saved. Another storm survived.
Later that year, Darell was honored by the officers with the Perchard Award, Aircrewman of the Year, once again.
About Darell Gelakoska
To understand Darell, you must begin in Grand Haven, Michigan—a town that could have leapt straight from a Rockwell painting. In the 1940s and ’50s, it embodied idyllic Americana: cozy shops, picket fences, a steadfast lighthouse weathering Lake Michigan’s storms, and neighbors who knew your business down to the hour you put out the trash. Yet beneath that postcard-perfect surface lay a mix of charm and absurdity that gave Grand Haven its unique heartbeat.
In this quirky, close-knit community, Darell Gelakoska grew up. His life didn’t just fit into Grand Haven—it broke free from its confines. His story was too vivid to be contained, too incredible for fiction. In a town where secrets didn’t stand a chance, Darell wasn’t trying to hide. He was writing a life people would talk about for decades.
At the heart of Grand Haven was Lake Michigan—a breathtaking expanse of crystal-clear waters and jaw-dropping sunsets that could convert even the most hardened cynic. But beneath its serene beauty lay a darker side. In 1929, on the Fourth of July, ten people drowned in a single day. Every child in town grew up with cautionary tales about the lake’s treacherous undertow and whispered warnings of swimmers vanishing beneath its deceptively calm surface.
One infamous story told of a teenager who disappeared near the sandbars—those shifting ridges of lakebed that lured people into knee-deep water to cool off in the summer sun. One afternoon, while laughing and splashing with friends, the boy wandered just a little too far. There was no thrashing, no cry for help—just an eerie silence as he vanished. Rescue crews found nothing but his shoes, left neatly on the beach, as if he’d simply stepped out of existence.
When the town finally built a new high school it opened its first public swimming pool in the 1950s, it was a revelation. Parents eagerly enrolled their children in lessons, determined to keep their names off the lake’s ghost-story roster. But there was a catch—boys’ swim classes were held in the nude. Picture a dozen mortified preteens splashing around like startled otters. It was the kind of memory that turned into comedic gold at family reunions—or mild trauma, depending on who was telling it.
In Grand Haven, the Coast Guard wasn’t just part of life—it was life. Dubbed “Coast Guard City,” the town wore its title with pride, a distinction officially recognized by Congress in 1998. But long before the accolades, the bond between Grand Haven and the Coast Guard was forged through shared resilience and unforgettable acts of heroism. The mast of the sunken USCGC Escanaba stands proudly in a waterfront park, a solemn reminder of the hometown men lost during World War II.
Darell grew up steeped in this culture. While other kids dreamed of home runs and touchdowns, he watched Coast Guard crewmen in their sharp uniforms, imagining himself aboard one of their ships. The Coast Guard wasn’t just a career in Grand Haven—it was a calling.
Legend has it that one stormy night in the 1940s, a freighter was caught in gale-force winds near Grand Haven. The local Coast Guard crew battled the storm for hours, rescuing the sailors one by one. By dawn, the townsfolk had gathered on the pier to cheer the exhausted crew as they returned to harbor. Stories like this weren’t just part of the town’s history; they were its soul, passed down through generations.
For Darell, Grand Haven wasn’t just home. It was the place that gave him his first taste of adventure, resilience, and belonging to something greater than himself. Endless afternoons fishing off the pier were less about catching fish and more about catching dreams.
The moment that would shape Darell’s future came unexpectedly. He was a scrawny kid, fumbling with a fishing pole he barely knew how to use, trying to look as cool as the older boys on the pier. That’s when the lighthouse keeper appeared, casting a long shadow in the late afternoon sun.
“Aren’t you Joe’s little brother?” the man asked, squinting knowingly.
Darell nodded, torn between pride and the Gelakoska family’s inherent suspicion of authority.
Joe Gelakoska, Darell’s older brother, had joined the Coast Guard in 1955 and was already a local legend. To Darell, Joe was larger than life, a hero in a uniform that gleamed like armor.
One fateful night, Joe—then an Engineman Second Class (EN2) aboard a Coast Guard utility boat—was jolted awake by the piercing sound of an alarm. A cabin cruiser had collided with a massive auto carrier freighter in the icy waters of Muskegon, Michigan. Joe and his four-man crew scrambled into action, the chill of the night and the weight of uncertainty pressing on them.
At the crash site, chaos unfolded. The cruiser was shattered, fragments of its hull drifting aimlessly. The most haunting sound was the desperate screams echoing across the water. Without hesitation, Joe leapt into the frigid lake, still clad in his dungarees and without a life jacket. Guided by voices in the darkness, he swam through the debris-strewn water to rescue two women clinging to wreckage. Joe’s courage didn’t stop there—he and his crew later recovered six bodies, ensuring they were brought home to their families.
Years later, stationed in Alaska, Joe’s bravery was tested again when he saved a young boy flailing in an icy river. For his extraordinary heroism, Joe was awarded the Silver Lifesaving Medal—a testament to his unwavering dedication to saving lives.
“My brother Joe’s courage is why I joined the Coast Guard. He’s not just my brother; he’s my hero,” Darell would later say.
The lighthouse keeper remembered Joe’s bravery and asked if Darell wanted to spend the night in the lighthouse.
For Darell, this was the ultimate invitation. Grabbing his older brother Daniel, the two followed the keeper up the spiral staircase, their hearts racing with excitement. Under the rhythmic flash of the beacon, the keeper spun tales of hurricanes, shipwrecks, and miraculous rescues, painting the Coast Guard as more than a job—it was destiny.
But Grand Haven wasn’t a place where dreams came easy. By 1966, Darell had barely scraped through high school, his grades hovering in the “hopeless” category. College was out of reach, the Vietnam War loomed, and the draft notice arrived like a freight train.
For most, that might have been the end of the story. There was even a two-year wait to get into the Coast Guard. But Darell had Joe.
With a single phone call, Joe cleared the path that led straight to Coast Guard boot camp in Cape May, New Jersey.
Boot camp was grueling: endless physical training, drill instructors running on caffeine and rage, and beds made so tight you could bounce a quarter off them. For Darell, it wasn’t just hard—it was transformative. He graduated with a uniform and a purpose.
Sometimes, fate doesn’t wait for you to find it—it comes looking for you.