Van Nuys Man Tells of Ordeal in Indonesia

When the stewardess on his Singapore Airlines flight to San Francisco handed 47-year-old Patrick Gibson a white, steamed towel, the Van Nuys man said he knew the nightmare finally had ended for him and two fellow scuba divers.

Gibson and three other Southern Californians--Cliff Craft, 43, of Whittier; Danny Commerford, 38, of Orange, and Jim Vorus, of Santa Monica--were among 11 men who had been held since March 22 in Indonesia on charges of illegally entering that country’s territorial waters after chartering a boat, from which they planned to dive.

On Saturday, the four sailed from the city of Tanjungpinang on Bintan Island, where they had been confined, to Batam Island, where they stole a 13-foot wooden fishing boat and made their way across the Strait of Malacca to Singapore, about 20 miles away, according to their accounts.

By Sunday, after obtaining travel papers from the U.S. Embassy, Gibson, Craft and Commerford boarded their flight home, bringing to a close what a day earlier had been a “no-end-in-sight” legal fracas, Gibson said. Vorus’ whereabouts could not be determined.

“As we went through this entire thing, we kept asking each other ‘when will we know when this is over?,’ ” said Gibson. The group was confined during the first 47 days mostly on their chartered boat, he said.

Gibson, Craft and Commerford are members of the California Wreck Divers Club, some of whose members face charges of defacing two historic shipwrecks off the Southern California coast.

Gibson said plundering for buried treasure is not what took him to Indonesia.

On March 22--the day they were arrested in Indonesia--the group had chartered a vessel from an Indonesian captain in Singapore, Gibson said.

As they looked for a reef in what they believed were international waters, Gibson said, an Indonesian navy plane made several low passes overhead. Shortly thereafter, Indonesian authorities boarded the chartered boat. It was escorted into the port of Tanjungpinang.

For the next 47 days, Gibson said, the group was only allowed to use an adjacent pier for exercise. “It was 90 degrees almost everyday,” said Gibson, “and extremely humid.”

They spent most of their time in module-like shelters on the boat, he said. “We passed the time by reading,” said Gibson.

Gibson said he lost 18 pounds during the ordeal. “There was no red meat, salt or processed sugar,” he said. “Plus, I didn’t have much of an appetite.”