CORONA DEL MAR : 2 Rescued at Sea After Sailboat Fire

Two men in a dinghy were rescued Tuesday several miles from Newport Harbor after they abandoned their sailboat, which had apparently been set afire by “careless smoking,” one of the men said.

While the Harbor Patrol said it was still investigating the cause of the 11:20 a.m. blaze, the boat’s owner, Johan Per Aslander, said later he thought the fire may have started in a trash can below deck. Earlier, said Aslander, he and his skipper, Wolf Werner, had extinguished another fire in that garbage can.

Aslander, 47, of San Dimas did not say what caused the first fire, but Werner, 46, of Long Beach suggested that “probably careless smoking” was the cause.

Although they were sunburned and exhausted, neither man suffered noticeable injuries. No one else was on board the 42-foot, Wasa 420 leisure craft.

“I just can’t talk because my voice is harsh from the smoke,” rasped Werner as he and Aslander awaited a car to take them to a train station. They were heading back to San Diego to get their cars, a Harbor Patrol deputy said.

Aslander said he and Werner left San Diego on Monday afternoon to sail to Newport Harbor. “We were just out sailing,” he said.

Aslander said he was on the deck napping when Werner woke him, saying the boat was on fire. The sailboat was two miles from Crystal Cove.

“My crew member tried to extinguish the fire while I was still asleep,” Aslander recounted, his voice barely audible.

Both men tried to douse the flames with an extinguisher, he said, but “the heat was too intensive, so we had to jump into the dinghy.”

There had been a small fire in the trash can shortly before, Aslander said. “We thought the fire was out; everything seemed to be fine,” he said.

The men could very well have extinguished the fire, Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson said. However, the boat moving along with the ocean breeze could have reignited the flames, he said.

“It doesn’t take that much to start it again,” Olson said.

The blaze was reported by a Huntington State Beach lifeguard who saw smoke billowing from the boat, Olson said. By the time two Harbor Patrol fireboats and two patrol boats arrived 10 minutes later, the sailboat was engulfed in flames. Firefighters contained the blaze within 20 minutes, Olson said.

“Probably the most dangerous thing the harbor guys do is fight a fire because (the boat) could have exploded any minute,” said Olson.