By NATE DYBVIG
Staff Writer
GARRISON,MN
As a 10-year-old, Chris Atwater underwent 64 hours of open-heart surgery that left him with a Teflon patch on his heart and a questionable future.
"The doctors told me that if I made it to the age of 18 they would be surprised," the 23-year old Brainerd man said Tuesday.
His heart passed a test that no doctor would have put him through last weekend. He spent 13 hours drifting, floating and swimming in the frigid waters of Lake Mille Lacs.
Atwater discussed the ordeal that claimed three lives in an interview Tuesday on the shores of the lake.
Chris Atwater said Linda Atwater saw him as the child she never had.
The party decided upon the late-night expedition because they were seeking walleye, a fish Chris said bite best after dark on Mille Lacs. Launching from Garrison, the party anchored in an area known as 8-mile flat shortly before 11 p.m. Friday. Before long, tragedy struck.
A boat leaving the area for the night sent a wake toward the stern of Atwater's 15-foot bass boat that was getting its inaugural dip in Mille Lacs. In an effort to stay dry, the women moved to the front of the boat, and a wave broke over the front of the boat. The group then move to the back, and Atwater's 90-horse motor submerged, and became water-locked. The water that had been taken on reduced the amount of the boat's hull that was above the lake surface, and a wave crashed over the side, filling the boat's lower deck. The on-board bilge pump was not making a dent in the water situation, and so Atwater decided to flip the boat to trap air in the hull to retain some buoyancy.
After the decision to flip was made, Atwater made sure each passenger was secured in a life jacket before they entered the water. It was now a short time after 11 p.m. Atwater said he knew the group needed to stay together, so he ripped wires from his trolling motor, and the carpet from the decking to tie the group to the boat. He encouraged them to refrain from yelling for help as they would need their strength to make it to morning.
Gayle Boland would be the next to die.
"She got off the boat and was swimming around the front to get back on when she suddenly took a big gulp of lake water and passed away," Atwater said.
The Bolands had told Atwater that if they didn't make it they would like to die together. Despite this plan, Scott was able to fight the elements until shortly before daybreak when he eventually lost his battle with hypothermia.
As he was tying Scott's body into the boat, Atwater said that the buckle on Gayle's life jacket snapped, causing the three bodies to float loose. Gayle's lifejacket, at that time, remained attached to Linda Atwater's, Chris Atwater said. Atwater was able to grab Linda and tie her back in, but by the time he went to get the Bolands, they were gone.
"They were born-again Christians," Kramer said today. "I am certain that they would never kill themselves. I know in my heart that they put up a good fight."
Aware of the fact that he would need to stay warm to stay alive, Atwater regularly swam laps around the boat to keep his blood circulating.
"I could see it when it was probably five miles away, he said, and that was at about 9 a.m."
Flailing his exhausted arms in an attempt to gain attention, Atwater knew he would need to be rescued soon if he had any hope of surviving. As the boat drew near, Atwater knew his ordeal was nowhere near over, but that his time in the lake was drawing to a close.
When he climbed on the rescuer's houseboat at a shade before noon, the boat's captain was a bit surprised at what he had found. Through the ordeal Chris had given articles of his own clothing to his aunt and the Bolands to keep them warm. When he emerged from the lake, he was wearing only underwear and shoes.
The fisherman quickly wrapped Chris in a sleeping bag and headed for the Garrison landing. Cold and tired, Atwater was rushed to St. Joseph's Medical Center in Brainerd where he was checked out and, remarkably, given a clean bill of health. While at the hospital, the Aitkin County sheriff called him to request his assistance in the search process.
By the time he returned to the Garrison landing on Saturday, members of the news media had assembled at the side of the lake, and Chris knew he would need a clever plan to avoid them.
"I saw a life jacket with sheriff's department written in big letters on the back, so I put that on and everyone left me alone."
Atwater went out with the sheriff for a few hours on Saturday, but the poor lake conditions made the search difficult, and eventually the boats were pulled off the lake in favor of aerial searches. The Aitkin County sheriff has enlisted the services of a plane equipped with an infrared scanning device. The sheriff's office reported that rough lake conditions have made on-the-lake searches nearly impossible.
Gayle's daughter, Kati Green, said today that while she was shocked and saddened by the death of her mother, she knows that the final years she had spent with Scott had been her best.
"I know that I have beaten the odds twice, but I can't let that stop me," he said, "I look at the lake, and even though it's that lake, I know I will still want to go fishingÉ someday." 
Gayle and Scott Boland of Brainerd joined the Atwaters on Lake Mille Lacs Friday night. Their bodies have yet to be found by search crews on the lake.
Late Friday night Atwater, his aunt, Linda Atwater and friends, Scott and Gayle Boland hit the lake for late-night fishing. The Bolands were high school sweethearts who had been reunited within the last few years and they had been married for less than a year. "Scott moved up here from Louisiana a year ago to marry my daughter," Gayle's mother, Betty Kramer said.
Atwater said he and Scott knew each other from when they worked together at Gary's Painting in Brainerd. They had continued their friendship through regular fishing trips to area lakes.
Linda Atwater always treated her nephew, Chris, like a son. On Saturday morning, Chris watched his aunt suffer what he described as a diabetic reaction. She died in the frigid waters of Lake Mille Lacs.
Atwater feared the most for his aunt.Linda had diabetes and he knew that fighting the cold would rapidly deplete the blood sugar that she would need to survive. His fears became reality as he said she suffered a diabetic reaction and at around 1:30 a.m. Saturday her body went limp and she died. "I would swim awhile slowly to warm up, then I would go a bit faster, and then I would swim slow to cool down."
As the lone survivor, Chris' struggle became more difficult as he saw the boat that would eventually rescue him appear on the distant horizon nearly four hours before it fished him from the lake. "I have never met a more giving man than Chris," said Sheila Owen, Atwater's fiancee, "Anyone who knows him knows he tried everything possible to save the rest."
Atwater had made an attempt to keep all of the incident's victims with the boat but his efforts were futile, and Linda was the only body that was recovered with the capsized boat. "This had been the happiest year of both of their lives."
Atwater said that while the event has shaken him, he doesn't anticipate it ruining his life-long love of fishing.