Repairs Keep L.A.’s Boat Out of Water but Officials at Sea : City government: La Mer, a vessel meant to sample water in Santa Monica Bay, sleeps seven, has two staterooms and three bathrooms. It has absorbed $5.5 million and five years of work, but it has never been in operation.

Until three years ago, Knight & Carver Custom Yachts of San Diego never had a government contract. But when the city of Los Angeles picked the 18-year-old company to build a custom vessel to monitor water quality in Santa Monica Bay, it didn’t take long before serious questions were being raised about the project.

Around the shipyard, the scuttlebutt centered on the craft’s extravagant design--particularly for a science boat destined for day excursions along the coast. Maybe, the jokes went, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley was going to use it for fishing trips. At least that, they said, would explain the ship’s name: La Mer.

Today, however, no one is laughing about the boat. Not at Knight & Carver. And certainly not at City Hall.

Five years and $5.5 million after the Board of Public Works and the Bureau of Sanitation set out to build a boat for water-sampling in Santa Monica Bay, the striking 85-foot fiberglass ship has never been in service. And as it sits dry-docked for repairs in a San Pedro boatyard, no one is sure when La Mer, French for “The Sea,” will set sail.

Already, the cost of the ship is far greater than original city estimates of $1.5 million and greater than the costliest oceanographic vessels recently purchased by several other public agencies. The city of San Diego, the county of Los Angeles and state Department of Fish and Game, in fact, all spent less to buy their ships outright than the $1.1 million Los Angeles has paid for La Mer’s design work and construction management alone. A San Pedro naval architecture firm, owned by Harbor Commissioner Robert G. Rados Sr., has worked on the boat since winning a design competition in 1986.

La Mer’s costs also include $308,000 for repairs now under way at a San Pedro boatyard owned by Rados’ nephew. And that boatyard, according to city officials, also has another contract, worth about $100,000 a year since 1987, to store and service Los Angeles’ older vessel, which La Mer was supposed to replace.

Despite La Mer’s substantial costs, officials of the Board of Public Works and the Bureau of Sanitation defend their 1986 decision to design and build their own ship for monitoring water quality in Santa Monica Bay.

“As the boat was built and we received word of problems and costs, the board still felt it was in the best interests of the city to continue to build the boat,” said Dennis Nishikawa, until recently the acting president of the Board of Public Works.

City officials also blamed La Mer’s problems on Knight & Carver.

“Personally, I’m very upset that we don’t have an operating boat yet. And I’m particularly upset with Knight & Carver,” said Harry Sizemore, an assistant director of sanitation.

But Knight & Carver executives insist--and documents suggest--that La Mer’s high costs and production delays were not only approved by Los Angeles but caused by “change orders” and a lack of critical review by city officials.

“We built what they wanted. It was not our place to tell them what they needed,” said Meri Knight, the shipyard’s general manager.

Moreover, officials from other agencies with similar ocean-monitoring programs privately blame the city for the La Mer saga.

“All the rest of us already have our boats and spent far less money because we used off-the-shelf designs. We didn’t start from scratch,” said one official. “And it’s ridiculous to say you had to do that. We’re talking about coastal samplings, not braving the seas off Tierra del Fuego.”

If long voyages were La Mer’s mission, documents, interviews and a tour of the ship suggest that its crew would be comfortable, safe and well-fed.

* While principally designed for day trips in local waters, La Mer has sleeping quarters for a crew of seven. Its main and lower decks, where some rooms are lined with Honduran mahogany, include a captain’s quarters, two staterooms and three bathrooms, two with showers.

* The galley, next to a large dining area, includes a range, two microwave ovens, a $450 toaster, a $270 coffee maker, a $64 can opener and various cooking items, including cake and muffin tins, skillets, and baking and sauce pans.

* The ship’s bridge boasts two radar systems, a sophisticated gyroscopic compass and two closed-circuit monitors, one of the engine room, the other of the aft deck. Because of its sheer size, the ship also has three so-called wing stations for controlling the vessel from outside the bridge.

* City purchase orders show that while some supplies like medicinal whiskey, morphine and a World Directory of Venereal Disease Treatment Centres at Ports were disallowed, the city did approve the purchase of Valium, penicillin, insulin, nitroglycerin tablets and hemorrhoidal suppositories.

La Mer’s amenities, however, account for only a relatively small portion of the vessel’s overall cost. Since 1986, costs for design and construction management, originally estimated by Rados’ company at $441,888, have grown to $1.1 million. Construction costs have risen from a pre-design estimate of $1 million to an actual total of $4.1 million.

The construction cost includes $500,000 for more than 125 change orders, covering items from the ship’s turbocharged engines to the installation of safety rails to keep the ship’s crew and equipment from falling overboard.

Documents show that the push for a custom vessel began five years ago, when city Sanitation Director Delwin Biagi and City Engineer Robert Horii received permission from the Board of Public Works to solicit designs for such a ship. Biagi declined to return calls, referring inquiries to the sanitation bureau’s Sizemore. Horii refused to comment about La Mer except to say that his office had no major role in its design or building--a claim supported by other city officials.

A Feb. 7, 1986, report approved by public works commissioners says that a new vessel was needed for more sophisticated monitoring of Santa Monica Bay and sewage discharges from Los Angeles’ Hyperion Treatment Plant. That monitoring, the report says, required a vessel that was faster and more reliable than the city’s Marine Surveyor, a 65-foot ship commissioned in 1963 and plagued by maintenance problems.

In June, 1986, the Board of Public Works recommended that Rados International Corp. be awarded a design contract for the vessel. The firm, according to a city report, was one of six contacted by the city, although only two provided formal proposals and oral presentations.

In a Sept. 8, 1986, city report, when Rados International was awarded the $441,888 contract, public works officials noted that Rados had just been appointed to the city’s Harbor Commission. His Aug. 14 appointment, the report says, was made one day before Rados International was authorized to begin its design work but two months after the company had won a design competition for the vessel.

Rados declined to comment about the contract but noted that the city attorney’s office allowed his company to bid on the project because he had no direct role in awarding its contract. Rados also insisted that he had nothing to do with the project but did acknowledge that he visited San Diego to challenge Knight & Carver’s criticisms of the ship’s design. He referred all other questions about the ship’s design to his sons, Robert Jr. and Randy, who are executives in Rados International.

Months later, after the design contract for the Rados firm had been increased to $700,000 but before officials contacted any shipbuilders, city officials outlined a detailed rationale for commissioning a custom-made vessel. A report dated May 11, 1987, said all other options would have drawbacks. Yachts, at $1 million to $2.5 million, would be too expensive, the report said; fishing vessels, at a speed of 10 to 12 knots, would be too slow, and boats typically used by the oil industry were too heavy.

Subsequent city reports, however, show that La Mer’s costs soon far exceeded those cited for a yacht. And the last estimate of La Mer’s cruising speed was 13 knots, not the 16 to 18 knots originally demanded by the city. Finally, a January, 1990, report showed that La Mer was 11 tons heavier than predicted--so heavy, in fact, that protective fenders and through-hull openings for drainage fell below the ship’s waterline.

Today, the ship remains in dry-dock for reasons and repairs that city officials, including Deputy City Atty. Lauren Arky, counsel to the Board of Public Works, refuse to discuss.

Officials with Knight & Carver, which won the boat contract in July, 1988, and delivered it to the city last August, contend that La Mer’s delays and costs stem from designs that were flawed or surprisingly expensive for a government contract.

“The astonishing thing is that the interior design is far more conducive to a yacht than a science boat,” said Carl Tatus, Knight & Carver’s operations manager, adding that one city official monitoring the boat did not seem bothered by its extravagance. “He’d say, ‘Wait till the guys at the county (of Los Angeles) see my boat,’ ” said Tatus, who like many others blamed the project’s costs on design problems and unnecessarily expensive features.

But Rados’ sons blamed the project’s costs on builder delays and said the vessel’s design and equipment were mandated by its ocean-monitoring requirements.

“The city intends to keep this vessel for 25 years. . . . You don’t just plan for today’s usage, you plan for the future,” Robert Rados Jr. said. “If you don’t do it right, the thing could be obsolete.”

Nishikawa, of the Board of Public Works, also denied that La Mer was too extravagant. Like other city officials, he said La Mer will be a real asset when it begins service. “We believe it will be long in city service.”

While Los Angeles still waits for La Mer, the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts already have their new boat, at a cost of $750,000. The 66-foot Ocean Sentinel was delivered in October, 1989, 16 months after its purchase was approved. The state Department of Fish and Game took delivery of its 80-foot, $800,000 vessel, Mako, last July, one year after it was budgeted for ocean-monitoring anywhere off the California coast. And the city of San Diego in the last five years has purchased two ships, the 30-foot Metro and the 42-foot Monitor III, for a total of $375,000.

Meanwhile, La Mer sits in dry-dock at San Pedro Boat Works, a large shipyard owned by Andy Wall, Rados’ nephew. Wall, whose company has other city contracts for repairing and storing vessels, said his contract for La Mer was won through competitive bidding. City officials, however, said their records show that the work was authorized by sanitation officials under an existing contract with Wall for repairs to Marine Surveyor.

Wall’s company continues to be paid for making repairs to La Mer while its builder is squabbling with the city over $212,000 withheld from the final payment on the vessel. Meri Knight said the city agreed to make its final payment on the ship when it sailed to Los Angeles in August. The delivery followed a sea trial of the vessel by several city officials, including attorney Arky, who also sent Knight a letter in 1990 saying that final payment to Knight & Carver “should be issued” last Aug. 15.

In an interview, Arky refused to discuss the letter or the reasons for withholding payment to Knight & Carver.

“It’s been a nightmare,” Knight said last week from San Diego. “It’s the only government contract we’ve ever had and if I have anything to do with it, it will be the last.”