Del Mar Pair, 12 Others Missing After Boat Sinks

A search in Mexico’s Gulf of California was to continue today for 14 missing persons, including a Del Mar couple and nine other U.S. citizens, who were aboard a chartered boat that sank early New Year’s Day.

Two survivors--a diver from Tucson, Ariz., and a Mexican crewman--were pulled to safety Tuesday afternoon after floating for more than a day in the 55-degree waters separating the Mexican mainland and the Baja California Peninsula.

On Wednesday night, relatives and neighbors confirmed that Joseph T. Ream, 63, and Janet Ream, 56, of Del Mar, were on the scuba-diving excursion. The Reams are a semi-retired couple whose enthusiasm for diving led them in recent years to take scuba trips to the Red Sea, New Zealand, Australia and Mexico.

Family members also said the couple lifted weights at the Encinitas YMCA and were in excellent shape.

Jay Broad, a nephew of Janet Ream, said his family had been contacted by the Coast Guard and U.S. consular officials in Mexico. “We’re just hoping that something breaks,” Broad said.

Janet Ream was a founder of the Del Mar farmer’s market and active in council elections as a grass-roots worker, friends said. Relatives will fly to Guaymas today.

Survivor Ophram Watson, 62, of Tucson, said a large wave swamped the vessel sometime between 3 and 3:30 a.m. Monday as the craft was riding in rough seas about 25 miles west of the Mexican port of Guaymas, according to David Stone, a U.S. consular official in Hermosillo. Stone interviewed Watson.

The 70-foot Santa Barbara went down about five minutes after the wave hit, before anyone had a chance to get in one of the three lifeboats, U.S. and Mexican officials said.

However, in a two-page consulate report obtained by Reams’ relatives, Watson is quoted as saying that as many as 10 people may have survived in a lifeboat. Watson also said he felt “a severe vibration” before the sinking.

Missing are eight Arizonans, three Californians and three Mexican crewmen. Addresses and confirmed identities of the missing were still not being released.

As of late Wednesday, searchers said no bodies had been found and limited debris had been discovered.

Watson was plucked from the water by a private search vessel around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, after he had spent about 38 hours floating on a wooden chunk of a door, authorities said.

He told investigators and others that he owed his survival largely to a remarkable coincidence: A bag containing his wet suit fell into his hands as the big wave rocked the vessel, enabling him to put on the insulating outfit quickly. Most people were in their bunks when the wave struck, authorities said.

Other initial survivors, without wet suits, clung to the floating wood for hours, but they drifted off as the time went by and the cold began to affect their bodies, said Joaquin Dorantes Gutierrez, port captain of Guaymas, who based his information on interviews with the U.S. survivor.

Watson, who returned to Arizona on Wednesday, and the other survivor, Vincente Gonzalez Mancilla, 30, were reported in good condition. Gonzalez was picked up at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday by a ferry. He apparently was clinging to a life preserver, but did not have a wet suit.

A U.S. Coast Guard Falcon H-25 rescue jet and fixed-wing C-130 search aircraft were expected to head for the area for the third consecutive day today. Mexican search vessels and two aircraft were also planning to continue the search in a 100-square-mile area.

The Santa Barbara, based in San Carlos, north of Guaymas, was described by the Tucson charter company that arranged to lease it as a 70-foot, steel-hulled craft built as a shrimping trawler that had been refurbished for diving jaunts.

When the Santa Barbara sank, Mexican officials said, it was returning to San Carlos after spending time on a scuba jaunt near Tortuga Island, near the Baja coast.

The vessel apparently had no firm return date, only sometime on Monday or Tuesday, a fact that one U.S. official said may have slowed rescue efforts, as no one initially knew that it had capsized. The excursion began Dec. 28.

The Santa Barbara had recently undergone a “complete, stem-to-stern safety inspection and overhauling,” according to Casey McCarthy, a representative of Silent Experience, the Tucson dive shop that helped arrange the charter.

Times staff writer Nancy Ray contributed to this report.