Mooring Master Tells Regret, Denies Blame

John Keon, the mooring master who supervised the ill-fated berthing of the American Trader off Huntington Beach, said Friday night that he feels badly about the oil spill but that he is not to blame.

“Our lives are tied to the sea,” said Keon, 41, in his first interview since the accident. “We care just as much about the birds and the fish and everything else, the pollution, as anybody. I see those people on the beach and I hope they know that.

“I don’t have any accident or incident on my record, and after this investigation is done that will be the same,” Keon said.

“Obviously something happened out there. There’s a ship with at least one hole in it and a pollution incident. Beyond that I can’t say any more.”

Keon spoke at his home after returning for the first time since the Wednesday afternoon oil spill. He said he had been awake, talking to Coast Guard officials since the accident.

He said crew members at first were baffled by the oil leak. “They knew on the ship that there was oil on the water. They saw it and smelled it. But nobody knew what caused it for a few hours until the divers went down and discovered a hole.”

The tanker’s 12-ton anchor had gashed a hole in the hull during a routine mooring maneuver. Keon said he has guided between 75 and 100 moorings at the Huntington Beach terminal, and there was nothing different about the situation this time.

“There was no low tide,” Keon said, disputing official reports. “The tide was normal. There was nothing unusual about the conditions at all. All the moorings on the West Coast are virtually the same. There is nothing particularly difficult about this one.”

But Keon, speaking with his wife Karen and daughter Heather nearby, said he was under orders not to offer any more details.

He said the environmental damage was upsetting to everyone aboard the ship.

Keon, a burly man with sandy hair and full beard, looks the part of a seaman. He has worked on ships for 24 years since starting as an ordinary seaman. He has been a self-employed mooring master at Huntington Beach for five years.

The American Trader’s captain, A. R. (Robert) La Ware, was also on board at the time of the accident. But it is typical for an experienced local pilot to guide the berthing with help from a mooring launch on the water.

Both Keon and La Ware were tested for drugs and alcohol after the accident. The alcohol results were negative and the drug tests are pending. A friend said Keon is a teetotaler.

About 300,000 gallons of Alaskan crude oil poured from the tanker’s hull and some of the crude has washed onto a 12-mile stretch of Orange County beaches.

The tanker berthing process is laborious, often taking two to three hours. The large ship must be turned and nudged into position between a cluster of buoys that hold it in position. The ship is then connected to a pipeline that carries the crude oil to refineries onshore.

Keon and his family have lived in the San Jacinto area for eight years. They own a tan, stucco house with a red-tile roof on Inglenook Avenue, a quiet cul-de-sac in an upscale subdivision. He and his wife grew up in the Garden Grove-Westminster area of Orange County.

The mooring master praised the tanker crew’s efforts to quickly contain the damage. “The vessel captain notified the Coast Guard and all the pertinent authorities right away,” Keon said. “They were on the scene quickly. The response was excellent.”

Warren reported from San Jacinto and Roderick from Los Angeles.