Driver, Passenger Plunge Off Ferry Into Newport Harbor

A couple waiting to board the Balboa Island Ferry on Saturday suddenly found themselves speeding in a runaway car across the ferry and plunging into Newport Harbor.

“It was extremely frightening,” said driver Janis L. Lyon, 33, of Irvine, who escaped with her passenger through the windows and swam to the surface before the car sank to the harbor bottom.

The accident occurred at 2 a.m. as Lyon and John Handley, 38, of Pacifica sat waiting in her 1986 gold Nissan 300-ZX to board the ferry.

“We were sitting at the stop sign, the car was in park and idling,” Lyon said. “The guy on the boat signaled us to come forward, so I put the car in drive and it just took off.

“It felt like we were doing 90 m.p.h. I tried braking, but that didn’t seem to have any effect. Then I tried shifting back into park, but by then it was too late.

“Once we hit the water, I still had enough wits about me to try rolling down the (power) windows, and fortunately, they still worked. When I think back, I’m sure that we wouldn’t have made it if those windows hadn’t worked.”

With the windows rolled down, the car quickly began to fill with water, just as the couple escaped and swam a few feet to the surface. They escaped shaken and bruised, and did not have to be hospitalized.

The car barely missed fee collector Matthew Sellers, 19, of Balboa.

Sellers remembered Saturday that he had signaled for the Nissan to come down the ramp onto the ferry when he heard the car’s engine loudly accelerating toward him.

He “turned and saw it coming at me. At that point, she must have been doing about 30 m.p.h.

“I jumped out of the way and she broke through some wooden seats and slipped underneath some metal bars that are at the front,” Sellers said.

Sellers and ferry employee Paul Dumas, 23, swam out to help the couple as the bobbing car began sinking in the 15-foot-deep channel. By the time they reached the couple, Lyon and Handley already had freed themselves.

For the 22-year-old captain of the Balboa Island Ferry, James Gubser, the accident was a real-life enactment of a recurring nightmare he has about every 2 weeks, he said.

Gubser said he knew almost immediately by the whine of the Nissan’s engine what was going to happen.

“I was on the landing turning off the dock lights when I heard the car take off,” he said. “I could hear the engine wind out and had a feeling that she wasn’t going to stop,” he said.

Gubser, a 7-year veteran with the ferry company, said that apparently the car’s accelerator pedal stuck. He pointed to skid marks that ran the length of the boat’s deck, showing that Lyon had tried to break. Lyon said she didn’t know what caused the accelerator to stick.

Lyon and Handley, who had been returning home from dinner at a Newport Harbor restaurant, gave a report to police but were not hospitalized.

The Nissan, which sank to the bottom of the channel, was recovered later Saturday. Lyon said that it was a total loss.

Gubser, a captain certified by the U.S. Coast Guard and a student at San Diego State University, said he knew of only one other time in the 7 years he has worked for the ferry company when a car went overboard.

“There was a lady who had apparently fallen asleep while waiting to get on the boat. When it was her turn to move her car, the people behind her blasted their horns and startled her. She drove right off the dock,” Gubser said.

The Balboa Island Ferry, a longtime tourist attraction, carries both pedestrians and motorists from the peninsula side of Newport Harbor to Balboa Island. The company, which operates three boats, estimates that each makes up to 150 crossings each day.