Fatal Boat Wreck Off Catalina Is Mystery

Coast Guard searchers found more pieces of the cabin cruiser Lucky R, including its fuel tanks, which were intact and full, but still could not explain how the boat was wrecked on Thanksgiving Day, killing at least two people about 10 miles north of Santa Catalina Island.

The bodies of Robert Reid, 84, and his wife, Thelma, 75, were found amid the splintered wreckage of the boat late Thursday afternoon. The body of the Hemet couple’s son, Charles Reid of Long Beach, had not been found by late Friday. Relatives told the Coast Guard that Charles Reid, who owned the 40-year-old, 34-foot Chris-Craft, also was aboard.

The wreckage of the boat, which was normally docked at the Long Beach Marina, was spotted at 4:45 p.m. Thursday by the crew of the excursion boat Catalina Countess.

Included in the debris that Coast Guard cutters picked up Friday were two 15-foot pieces from the outside of the Lucky R’s upper cabin, said Coast Guard Lt. Anthony Gentilella, commanding officer of the cutter Point Camden, one of two vessels that searched through the night and all day Friday for the younger Reid.

Gentilella was not willing to officially list explosion as the cause of the wreck, but he said the two pieces, whose windows were blown out, indicate that a blast occurred inside the cabin and that the top of the boat was blown up and outward.

There were no holes in the fuel tanks, Gentilella said, and “even the fittings that went up to the hull where you fill the fuel tanks were all together.”

However, there may have been other sources of fuel on the boat--such as propane--that could have caused an explosion. Pleasure boats like the Lucky R are powered by gasoline or diesel fuel but often have propane gas stoves in the galley.

The Coast Guard has not ruled out the possibility that the boat was involved in a collision. However, there was little evidence to suggest that was the case.

According to Gentilella, “Weather conditions were very good. It was daylight and (the boat) was not in the shipping lanes. Everything was going for them. That’s another thing that makes it weird. If it was a large tanker that hit the boat, somebody would have seen it.”

But officials Friday were reluctant to speculate about the cause.

On Monday, Gentilella said, Coast Guard investigators will try to piece together the dozens of splintered fragments that were recovered. They may seek the help of the Los Angeles Fire Department, he said, to analyze what look like small burn spots on some of the wood pieces.

Neither of the elderly victims was wearing a life jacket, investigators said.

Authorities believe the accident, whatever its cause, occurred not long before the wreckage was spotted. “One indication,” said Lt. Chris Reilly, operations center controller at the Long Beach Coast Guard station, “is that the debris was in a pretty tight group. If it had happened a lot earlier, the debris would have been spread over a wider area.”

The search for Charles Reid will resume at dawn, said Lt. Jim Pierson, duty commander at the Coast Guard station in Long Beach. The ocean depth in the area is 2,500 feet, too deep for divers, he added.

“There is a good chance he went down with the main body of the boat,” said Gentilella.

Autopsies on the elderly couple are still pending, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said Friday.