Wave That Hit Boat Not Rare, Expert Says

The towering “rogue wave” that slammed down on a San Diego sportfishing boat off Baja California and led to the deaths of 10 people Thursday is a relatively common phenomenon apparently caused when two waves merge and produce a single wave twice their height, experts said Saturday.

Dan Atkin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said so-called rogue waves are not unusual along the Southern California coast and have been blamed for past boating accidents in the near-shore waters of the Pacific.

“These are not out of the ordinary, or freak things,” Atkin said, “and they are not always dangerous. It’s a matter of the conditions--the weather, the currents, the wave frequency--coming together at once.”

Typically, offshore waves tend to cancel each other out and turn into harmless--if large--swells, Atkin and others said. But when the frequency of waves increases, overlapping may occur--a process some scientists call “constructive interference”--and a giant, rogue wave can be created.

“Some vessels are able to ride these waves out,” U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Michael Parks said. “But if you’re not positioned right--if you are sideways to the wave, for example--and a wall of water two stories high descends upon you, then you’ve got trouble.”

Scenario of Doom

That, a preliminary investigation suggests, was just the scenario that spelled doom for the Fish-n-Fool, the 57-foot boat that went down Thursday afternoon in waters 300 feet deep about 150 miles southeast of San Diego.

So far, only two of the 12 passengers on board are believed to have survived the ordeal, the worst shipwreck of its kind in the chilly, frequently fished waters off the Baja peninsula. The Coast Guard officially ended its search of a 300-square-mile area off San Quintin at dusk on Friday after recovering one body, that of 40-year-old George M. Stinson of Orange.

Jim Sims, 29, of Riverside, was rescued by Mexican fishermen after struggling for seven hours in the choppy sea near San Martin Island. The second survivor was Kathy Compton of San Diego, a crew member on the boat who was spotted in a life raft by search planes.

According to Sims and friends of the boat’s skipper, Gary LaMont of Spring Valley, the three crew members and their nine passengers set out from Point Loma late Tuesday for four days of fishing for yellowtail.

The voyage went smoothly until a wave described as 20 feet high loomed just after noon Thursday and capsized the boat, according to the survivors’ accounts.

‘Just Kept Coming’

The wave “just kept coming and coming,” according to one account provided by Compton. “You couldn’t even see the sky above it.”

While the seas were relatively calm at the time of the wreck, there was some choppiness, Sims told Coast Guard investigators. The boat reportedly sank within minutes after the wave hit it.

While experts agreed that rogue waves are no stranger to the Southern California coast, oceanographer Walter Munk said they tend to occur more frequently in waters shallower than where the Fish-n-Fool went down.

“It’s much less likely to see this sort of thing in waters over 100 feet deep,” said Munk, a researcher at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla. “We have all sat in shallow water and seen a wave much larger than those we were accustomed to sweep in. In deep water, it is a more complicated, a more unusual story.”

Munk declined further comment, saying that it would “not be sensible to speculate” without information on the topography of the ocean bottom, the weather, the currents and the direction from which the wave came.

Rumor Called False

On Saturday, a widely circulated rumor that apparently began with the family of one of the passengers suggested that the Mexican Navy had rescued six of the passengers. A U.S. Coast Guard spokesman, however, said the rumor appeared to be based on “miscommunication.” And both survivors have said that they watched helplessly as fellow passengers gave up their struggle for life in the choppy waters.

Coast Guard officials were attempting to contact the commandant of the Mexican Navy in an effort to clear up the mystery.

Still missing and presumed dead Saturday were LaMont, in his early 40s; Kent Springman, 37, of Riverside; Max Pfost, 52, of Riverside; Steve Rhoads, 25, of Costa Mesa; Rusty Paxton, age unknown, of Riverside; Ken Baldwin, 64, of Huntington Beach; Scott Milliron, 20, of Lakeside; Timothy York, 25, of Huntington Beach, and Terry Milam, 39, of Norco.