Sailor’s Dream Ends in Mid-Ocean Mystery : Southland Man’s Boat Found Adrift and in Good Condition After His Disappearance

It was an adventure that began on a summer’s day amid the fire works and frenzy of a nation’s bicentennial and foundered 12 years later in the vast solitude of the Pacific.

Earl Gutierrez loved the ocean and had dreamed of sailing around the world. As he set sail June 1 from Hawaii to Los Angeles on the last leg of his odyssey, that dream was about to be fulfilled.

But sometime between June 1 and July 23, somewhere in the Pacific, the journey ended.

On July 23, Gutierrez’s 28-foot sloop, the Aita Pea Pea, was found adrift by a Navy vessel about 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii. There was no sign of the 36-year-old sailor, and his fate remains a mystery.

Family Still Hoping

His mother and brother, who live in the San Fernando Valley, hold out hope that the son and brother they had been expecting home for so long is still alive. But they question why the Navy left the boat drifting when a more thorough inspection might have provided clues to his disappearance. And they are angry that the Coast Guard has never launched a formal search for Gutierrez.

“They explained that it was a large ocean, that there were a lot of variables and that they didn’t have enough information,” said Joe Gutierrez, Earl’s brother. “It’s very disturbing, when the possibility is he could still be alive.”

Alerts Issued

Coast Guard officials said alerts have been issued to all vessels passing through the area where the boat was found to notify authorities if it is spotted again.

But officials said a search for Gutierrez would be fruitless.

“We would have no idea where to begin looking,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Robert Taylor, chief of operations for the Pacific area. “Just because the boat was found in one place does not mean that is where the sailor would be found. . . . We’d have to search 400,000 square miles of ocean and we don’t have the resources to do it.”

Taylor acknowledged that Navy personnel who boarded the Aita Pea Pea conducted only a rudimentary inspection, but he said the Navy was not obliged to delay its mission by towing or anchoring the boat.

Rep. Ed Roybal (D-Los Angeles), who was contacted by the family, has requested that the Coast Guard use whatever resources are available to find the boat and conduct a more detailed inspection.

Authorities have offered a number of scenarios to account for the missing sailor, but they admit they are baffled by the evidence.

“The bottom line is we just don’t know what has happened to him,” Taylor said. “I would not want to give the family any false hopes, but anything is a possible.”

The Aita Pea Pea was discovered adrift on a calm, clear night by the Wadsworth, a guided missile frigate en route to British Columbia from Pearl Harbor with four other Navy frigates.

The Wadsworth’s skipper, Cmdr. Jim Taylor, said that because there was a light wind from the east, the crew assumed the boat had come from North America, an indication Gutierrez may have been much farther east when he left the vessel. The skipper said the convoy had run across no evidence of Gutierrez during its journey from Hawaii as the ships made radar and visual scans covering more than 600 square miles of ocean.

A boarding party found the boat in relatively good condition: The hull was sound and seaworthy. The storm jib--the boat’s small sail--was loose and damaged, indicating it had encountered bad weather at some point. But authorities cannot determine if the jib was unshackled by Gutierrez or was blown loose after he left the vessel.

On board, the party found personal belongings in the small cabin, including several items of clothing, some stale food, water, credit card receipts and charts.

More significant, however, is what was not found. No identification--Gutierrez’s passport, driver’s license, or credit cards--was discovered. His beloved parrot, Pedro, and his large cage were also missing, as were cameras, logs and a registered handgun, according to the Coast Guard’s Taylor. And there was no evidence, either on board the boat or in the immediate area, of the small life raft that Gutierrez was known to have had aboard.

Taylor said this evidence would seem to indicate that Gutierrez abandoned the boat. But the Navy personnel found no message indicating Gutierrez’s intentions, he noted. And an experienced sailor probably would not abandon a seaworthy boat for a small dinghy in the middle of the ocean unless he felt himself in danger.

Taylor theorized that despite the evidence, Gutierrez may have been washed overboard during a storm, or he may have become sick and hailed a passing merchant vessel for help. To date, no ships have reported such an occurrence.

There is even the possibility he was kidnaped, though authorities so far do not suspect foul play.

If Gutierrez did reach land, relatives and friends ask, why has he not contacted them?

Aiming for July 15

Family members say Gutierrez, who had returned to California several times over the years, told them he expected to reach the mainland no later than July 15. He was healthy, in good spirits and eager to return home, they said.

“If there were any way for him to get ahold of us he would,” said Inez Gutierrez West, Earl’s mother. “We always kept in touch and he always kept his promises.”

Roger Dallan has known Earl Gutierrez since junior high school and was one of his best friends. Dallan had visited him in Hawaii two weeks before he set sail. “He was well-rested, the boat was well-provisioned and he was looking forward to finally coming home,” Dallan said. “After all those years and after circumnavigating the globe, we all thought this would be the easiest part of it.”

Gutierrez had encountered plenty of perils in his travels and had always come through them, said Joe Gutierrez.

As a youngster he would watch all the action and adventure shows on television and point out the exotic locales he would someday visit, West said. He was also interested in animals and told his mother that he wanted to be a zoologist.

Gutierrez spent only a year at Los Angeles Valley College, but he was considered well-read and spent much of his time, when not fishing, reading--especially adventure writers like Ernest Hemingway and Joseph Conrad.

But his greatest love was the ocean. In the photo albums West has collected in the family’s Van Nuys home, there are pictures of the young Earl Gutierrez holding fish nearly as big as himself and of the youngster bounding about on his father’s small boat.

He worked at several jobs, including the produce section of a neighborhood market and at a shipyard in Long Beach, to earn the money for the Aita Pea Pea, which had already been named when he bought it in 1974.

At first Gutierrez was content to explore the waters around Southern California, taking friends on trips to Catalina and Newport Beach.

Headed for Hawaii

Then, in 1976, when he was 24 years old, he decided to sail to Hawaii. He told his mother he would be sailing with a friend, but she found out after the trip that he had only pretended to go with a companion to keep her from worrying.

“I told him, don’t you ever do something like that again, and from then on I always knew he was alone, but also where he was and how to contact him,” West said. While her son was adventurous, she added, he was never foolhardy or irresponsible.

He stayed in Hawaii for about a year, living on his boat and working for a time as a stevedore. From Hawaii he sailed to Tahiti, worked in a shipyard there and learned to speak French. He spent a year exploring nearby islands like Pitcairn and Bora Bora, “enjoying the ocean, nature, the terrain, the people and the way of life,” his brother said.

Gutierrez next headed for South America, but on the way he contracted hepatitis, either from bad water or from a tuna he had caught and attempted to dry, his brother said. By the time he reached port in Valdivia, Chile, he had to be carried from the boat and spent several weeks in a hospital.

In 1979, after regaining his health, he attempted the treacherous journey around Cape Horn. The boat was damaged in rough seas and Gutierrez spent days bailing water. By the time he reached Mar de Plata, Argentina, he was exhausted.

“He told me he had to stop and rest every so often because he just got tired of the rolling, rolling, rolling of the boat,” his mother said. “But he loved his boat. He had a stereo player and in the mornings he would play music at full blast because no one was around.”

Gutierrez spent nearly six years in Argentina. He settled down with a woman, and they started a sweater-exporting business. But he was there during a time of great strife, when opponents of the country’s military regime regularly disappeared. Some were his friends, Joe Gutierrez said, so when the relationship ended and the business failed, he set sail for South Africa.

Gutierrez wanted to be in Australia for the America’s Cup races in 1987 but just missed them, and after a couple of months in Sydney he sailed again for Hawaii, intending, at long last, to return home.

West said she has remained home almost constantly since Los Angeles police officials alerted the family of her son’s disappearance on July 24, taking calls from his friends around the world and hoping that one of the calls will be from him.

“That he might be alive somewhere and just hasn’t been found, that’s what we’re hoping for,” Joe Gutierrez said. “The uncertainty is the most difficult thing to endure, especially for mom, but the lack of certainty leaves us hope.”