Crew Hasn’t Abandoned Sinking Boat in Storm

Five San Diego-area residents stranded at sea in a sailboat battered by Tropical Storm Darby were safe in the company of a merchant ship late Wednesday night, awaiting the arrival of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter.

The five aboard the 45-foot ketch named Hosanna were delivering the boat to missionaries in the Marshall Islands when they hit rough waters near the eye of the storm, 450 miles southwest of San Diego.

The Coast Guard communication center in San Francisco received a call from the boat at 5:50 a.m. Wednesday, saying it was dead in the ocean and taking on water in 35-knot winds and 6- to 8-foot seas, said Coast Guard spokesman Lt (j.g.) Richard Williams.

A Liberian tanker, the Polynesia, was en route to Tahiti and 180 miles north of the troubled boat when it responded to the distress call. It arrived alongside the Hosanna shortly after 8 p.m. San Diego time.

The Hosanna’s five-member crew decided to stay with their boat, and were awaiting the arrival of the Coast Guard cutter Morgenthau, which was expected to arrive about 2 a.m.

Earlier, two Coast Guard Falcon jets and a C-130 cargo plane from Sacramento flew to the scene and dropped three pumps to the vessel, allowing it to keep up with the flooding and stay afloat. A radio also was dropped from the C-130 so its crew could stay in contact with those on the boat.

The five on the boat left Chula Vista Marina about 9:30 a.m. Saturday, destined for a stop in Hawaii before sailing on to the Marshall Islands, according to their friends.

The five are: Robert Smalley, 60, and his wife, Joan, 51; Moses Rodriguez, 66; Marilee Bankert, 50, and Robert Peishel, 60.

“They are all seasoned, experienced sailors,” said Grant Simkins, a close friend of Bankert’s.

The Hosanna is appropriately named, said Pat Cole of San Diego, who sings in the choir with the Smalleys at Faith Chapel in Spring Valley.

The boat was previously owned by an elderly Palm Springs couple who donated it to the Assemblies of God Church, based in Springfield, Mo., Cole said.

Joan Smalley somehow found out about the boat, which was docked in Chula Vista and which the Assemblies of God wanted to turn over to missionaries who sail among the Marshall Islands.

But the home-built boat needed work.

With $10,000 from the mission and a large sum of money from Faith Chapel, the Smalleys began refurbishing the vessel. Members of the church also pitched in, Cole said, helping to “build, repair, sew, stain, lay carpet and make canvas.”

“It was quite a team effort,” Cole said.

Robert Smalley, a retired electrical engineer from General Dynamics who has competed in races from California to Honolulu, installed all of the boat’s electronic equipment, she said.

“Joan is a loan officer for Wells Fargo Bank, she took a leave of absence on June 15, and they agreed to skipper the boat to the Marshall Islands and were going to fly back on a military transport,” Cole said.

The Smalleys chose three good friends and good sailors to join them on their trip, said Cole.

Bankert, of Mission Beach, was director of marketing at Fashion Valley shopping mall until July 1, when she decided to retire.

“They called her up and asked her if she would like to sail this boat over,” Simkins said. “She said sure, she would go as far as Hawaii.”

Peishel, who lives on his boat in San Diego, works for Desalination Systems in Escondido. Rodriguez of La Mesa, recently retired from General Dynamics.

Robert Smalley called members of the church choir Monday night, as he’d promised, to let them know how the trip was going, Cole said. The group also had put up a map of the Pacific Ocean in the church and were ready to plot the Hosanna voyage.

“He said they’d had a couple days of really rough weather, and everybody had gotten seasick, except one person,” Cole said. “But everybody felt better.

“He gave us the coordinates, and we saw he was further south than he intended to go. We don’t know whether he went further south to get around the storm or whether the storm pushed them that way.”

Cole said she had gotten word through the Coast Guard that the Hosanna began taking on water after its exhaust manifold broke. A Coast Guard spokesman Wednesday night said he could not confirm the report.

Cole said she was not surprised that the Smalleys and their crew had asked to stay with the boat when the merchant ship arrived. She said they probably were going to try to do whatever they could to avoid abandoning it.

A Coast Guard spokesman said Wednesday night that he could not confirm what caused the boat to take on water. He said it will be up to the skipper of the Morgenthau as to whether the Hosanna can be towed back to port.

“They’ve put so much time and effort and money into getting this boat ready to go to the Marshall Islands,” Cole said, “I’ll be sad to see it go down in the briny sea.”