Capsized Yacht Still Floating Toward Hawaii

Pandemonium might be the first boat to finish the 1991 Transpacific Yacht Race.

More than a year after capsizing while returning from the ’89 Transpac from Los Angeles to Honolulu, the 66-foot ultralight has been sighted once again, still floating upside down--this time 800 miles northeast of Hawaii on a slow drift toward the islands.

An unidentified oceanographic vessel reported to attorneys for the insurers that they saw the boat--distinctive because of a white hull and naked keel bolts--Thursday.

Owner Desmond McCallum, who had chartered the boat to another sailor for the race, received $335,000 in compensation for the loss. The San Francisco law firm of Derby, Cook, Quinby and Tweedt has filed a civil suit in San Diego seeking $360,053 in damages against six defendants, including the designers, Nelson-Marek.

“We’ve sued everybody having to do with the keel,” a spokesperson said.

The requested damages include $22,553 in personal property of the crew and $2,500 for a flyover after a first sighting in early February.

The firm also plans to attempt to salvage the boat, which, at its current rate of drift, could beach itself in Hawaii late next spring, shortly before the start of the ’91 Transpac.

Pandemonium flipped 300 miles off San Francisco on Aug. 3, 1989, when its keel fell off. A crew of five clambered onto the overturned hull and was picked up by a freighter late that night.

It was next seen early in February by a Matson Navigation Co. vessel about 700 miles southwest of that location, but a plan for a salvage operation was delayed when a seagoing tug was unable to leave Newport Harbor because of the Huntington Beach oil spill. By the time they could have left, salvagers figured, the boat would have drifted too far to be located again.