Survivors Tell of Cold Ordeal, Death at Sea

As darkness approached, Opha Watson says he doubted he would survive another evening in the chilly Gulf of California.

Thirty-eight hours after a charter boat sank Monday in high seas, leaving him and 15 others to the mercy of the waters, Watson was thinking about death. He had already seen four of his companions lose consciousness and drift away from a makeshift raft of wood and other debris salvaged from swirling waters.

His wet suit--spirited from the wreckage thanks to an improbable quirk of fate--had enabled him to survive this long.

“Honestly, I began to believe that I wouldn’t make it through the night,” Watson recalled Thursday from his home in Tucson. “I was getting cold and weak. But I thought I’d give it a try.”

As it turned out, he didn’t have to try much longer. Just before dusk Tuesday, a private rescue craft, the Sala del Mar, navigated directly toward Watson. A waving hand from a crewman signaled recognition and Watson’s survival.

“I guess it was just Providence,” said Watson, a 62-year-old retired engineer who credits his frequent workouts and outdoor life style with keeping him in good enough shape to survive the ordeal.

He was one of two survivors of the wreck of the Santa Barbara, a converted fishing boat on a scuba-diving expedition that went down early New Year’s Day in the Gulf of California about 25 miles west of the Mexican port of Guaymas. Remarkably, the other survivor, Vicente Gonzalez Mancilla, a 25-year-old Mexican machinist, moved in the chilly waters for some 35 hours with only a life preserver and some plastic covering he used both for flotation and warmth.

“I never stopped moving,” the still-dazed Gonzalez said Thursday from the Social Security Hospital in Santa Rosalia, the Baja California town where he was taken after being plucked from the water by a passing ferry boat Tuesday afternoon, a few hours before Watson’s rescue.

On Thursday, as weather conditions in the gulf worsened, U.S. and Mexican officials suspended their search for the 14 people still missing, saying there was little realistic hope they were still alive. As of late Thursday, no bodies had been recovered, officials said.

Among those missing are 10 U.S. citizens, seven from Arizona and three Californians, along with four Mexican crewmen. The Californians are Joseph T. Ream, 63, a retired engineer, and his wife, Janet Ream, 53, both of Del Mar; and Jerry Lyons, 53, a New Jersey native who ran a drug treatment program in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury section.

The shipwreck, which occurred about 3:15 a.m. Monday, was precipitated by extremely high seas that culminated when several huge waves swamped the vessel, according to the two survivors interviewed by telephone Thursday. The Santa Barbara turned over and sank within minutes, before anyone had a chance to launch one of several lifeboats, the survivors said.

Both survivors said Thursday the shipwreck initially caused a predictable period of swirling chaos and panic as screaming, pajama-clad passengers and stunned crewmen thrashed about in the early morning darkness as the boat was sinking.

From his bunk below deck, Watson said he bolted through a hatch into the water as the boat was tossed about on its side. He grabbed a floating object that, remarkably, was his personal “dive bag,” containing his custom-designed wet suit, a knife, cord, a flashlight, extra batteries and other essentials.

Eventually, Watson said, he and four other passengers--he identified them as the three Californians and woman named Nora (a Nora Malloy was listed among those who signed up for the excursion)--grabbed onto a wooden chunk of ship door, which was enhanced by floating bags, a plastic bottle and other debris. The night was stormy, but Watson said he was able to put on his wet suit.

As the time wore on, Watson said he watched his four colleagues suffer hypothermia and drift into unconsciousness, finally losing their increasingly desperate grips on the wood and life. He recalled how Joseph Ream attempted to save his wife, without success. By nightfall Monday, Ream himself went adrift, the last of the four to go.

“I saw them die,” Watson recalled. “It took hours, but they had to give up. The cold water just saps your energy. Without my wet suit, I wouldn’t be here today.”

By Tuesday, the seas had calmed and Watson said it was less of a struggle to maintain his life grip on the raft. But he said his energy was flagging when he spotted the rescue vessel headed right at him. Providence, he said, had intervened.