3 Saved After 13 Hours in High Seas : Waves Sink Fisherman’s Vessel but Not Crew’s Spirits

Three fishermen whose aging wooden boat sank Thursday night in rough seas off San Clemente Island spent 13 hours clinging to a piece of wreckage before being plucked from the ocean by the Coast Guard Friday morning and flown to San Diego.

Robert Culwell, 43, of West Covina; John Culwell, 24, of Mira Loma, and David Shakey, 20, of Long Beach emerged from a Coast Guard jet about 10:45 a.m., pink-skinned and swaddled in military thermal blankets but still capable of cracking a few jokes.

“Oh boy, as for myself, I can say I’m not going to fish for a living any more,” said the elder Culwell, who said he has worked intermittently as a commercial fisherman. “I might turn myself into a fish broker. I’ll let them catch ‘em, and I’ll sell ‘em.”

Asked whether he was going to pull through, Shakey answered softly from a gurney, “I dunno. I haven’t decided yet.”

Robert Culwell, his nephew John and Shakey, a crew member, had set off Thursday morning from Terminal Island in the elder Culwell’s boat, Sandy, on an overnight trip to fish for red snapper. Shortly before 8:30 p.m., and 40 miles southwest of San Clemente Island, two large swells struck the 38-foot boat, which was a World War II-era Navy vessel.

The swells apparently tore a plank loose from the hull, the elder Culwell said. His nephew quickly radioed the Coast Guard for help. He had time only to give the vessel’s coordinates before the ship began to sink. They believe it went down in three minutes.

At first, the three men clung to the boat’s dinghy. When that sank, they grabbed the wood and Styrofoam cover of their fish box, which had floated to the surface. For hours they floated, waiting for rescue, occasionally watching the Coast Guard planes searching futilely in the heavily overcast sky.

“They saw us come real close toward them and veer off,” said Coast Guardsman William Tuohy. “They had no way of illuminating themselves--not flares, not flashlights.”

Coast Guard officials said they called off the search about midnight, returning to the scene about 8 a.m. Friday. By then, the “data marker” they had dropped at the prescribed coordinates had drifted five miles. Then someone spotted a piece of wreckage and an oil slick.

Shortly before 9 a.m., Tuohy spotted the fishermen’s orange life vests, looking about the size of a dime from 500 feet in the air. A helicopter hovered 50 feet above the men and dropped a basket to pull the men from the water about 9:30. They then were transferred to a jet on the island and flown to San Diego.

Asked how they passed their time in the water, the younger Culwell called from an ambulance shortly before heading to UC San Diego Medical Center for a checkup: “Got wet. Froze our butts off.”

Nevertheless, the Culwells asked to forgo the checkups and left the hospital, officials there said. Shakey was treated for hypothermia and released.

John Culwell’s mother, Donna, said in a telephone interview that the fishing trip was to have been Shakey’s first as a crew member. He had recently moved from Texas, she said, where he had worked as a ranch hand.

She said her son is an experienced fisherman who has been in the business about five years.