DANA POINT : Substitute Sought for Scouts’ Sunken Boat

It was in the early evening last July, about 8 miles off Santa Catalina Island, when Skipper Robert Fagnant went below deck on the ketch Mariner and discovered that the boat was taking on water--fast.

Ten minutes later, the crew of seven Sea Scout teen-agers and Fagnant had been saved, thanks to a nearby boater. The 73-foot Mariner, however, sank and remains on the ocean floor, an estimated 2,400 feet down.

“The Mariner was a classic bugeye ketch, but it’s unrecoverable,” said John Wehan, a Sea Scout skipper and father of one of the young people aboard when the ketch went down. “Losing it was a disaster, but we’re looking at it as a beginning for us.”

The Mariner Sea Scouts of Dana Point are now asking the community for help in obtaining another boat. Wehan said the Scouts would welcome cash gifts, items of value that could be sold or raffled to generate money, or best of all, the donation of a boat. The group needs a boat 50 feet or longer with two masts, he said.

“We’ll consider any offer,” he said.

The Dana Point Sea Scouts, a division of the Boy Scouts of America, are not landlocked, however. They still have 11 smaller boats, including six Lido 14 sailboats, six Laser sailboats, two rowboats and a 14-foot outboard motor boat.

But none of those compare to the 42-year-old Mariner, a ketch that was originally built in the Chesapeake Bay area and donated seven years ago to the Scouts. It was an old oyster dredging vessel, but to the Scouts it was an exotic and educational sailing ship that had carried them to such places as Catalina Island, San Francisco, Mexico and on hundreds of other cruises, Wehan said.

“The (Mariner) had for years been the focus of (the Scouts’) blood, sweat and tears,” wrote Wehan in a letter to Scout supporters asking for help. He estimated that the Scouts need $100,000 to replace the ketch.

Oddly enough, only two months before it sank, the Mariner had undergone $8,000 in repairs, including refastening and recaulking the hull.

Wehan believes that the boat’s iron nails had rusted, allowing the ship’s planks to pop open.

“The skipper saw the boat’s seams open up, which wouldn’t have happened unless the planks had popped,” Wehan said. “That’s the only thing that makes sense to us.”

Anyone interested in helping the Scouts can call (714) 493-3952.