2 Swimmers Rescued Far Out to Sea : Mishap: Pair goes for dip from catamaran, which wind blows away. Another boater finds them.

A couple who went swimming in the open sea off a catamaran were fortunate to be rescued after the wind carried their boat away, stranding them five miles from land, authorities said Tuesday.

Michael O’Connor, a theatrical sound engineer from Dana Point, said he was alone aboard his 30-foot sailboat Monday afternoon when, on a whim, he decided to head toward a catamaran with a rainbow-striped sail.

“It passed me by 200 feet and as I looked, I saw there was no one on it,” O’Connor said.

As the catamaran sailed toward shore at a 10- to 12-m.p.h. clip, O’Connor said he decided to take the same course in the opposite direction, hoping to find its former occupants before they drowned.

Fifteen minutes later, he said, he was about to call the Harbor Patrol for help when he heard a “faint yell.”

“About 200 yards from the boat I spotted two people. They were waving their arms and screaming. It was at least five miles from shore.”

O’Connor said he yelled to them and tossed them a life preserver.

He said the older of the two swimmers, 24-year-old Antonio Beltran of Huntington Beach, was in bad shape when he was pulled aboard.

“His lips were blue and kind of pale and he was really, really out of breath. He said he had another 15 minutes in him, but I doubt if he had five.” Both swimmers had been skinny dipping, he said.

The other swimmer, a 17-year-old female from Capistrano Beach, was calmer and in better condition, O’Connor said. She was not identified because she is a juvenile, authorities said.

Beltran declined to be interviewed.

O’Connor said that Beltran, a volunteer with the Sea Scout youth organization, who had obtained the 16-foot catamaran from the Sea Scout base in Dana Point, was very embarrassed.

O’Connor said Beltran told him he had left the sails loose so the boat would stay put. When the sails filled and the boat glided toward shore, the couple swam in an attempt to catch it, O’Connor said.

When that became futile, they started to swim toward shore, fighting a southerly wind and current.

The couple had been swimming about 45 minutes, O’Connor said, before he picked them up and bundled them in extra clothing he had aboard.

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At the time of the rescue, he said, “there wasn’t another boat for four or five miles in any direction.” The couple, he said, were “very grateful.”

Meanwhile, the crewless catamaran had washed ashore at Doheny Beach State Park, where it raised concerns among beach visitors.

“I was driving on patrol and was flagged down by park visitors who told me a Hobie Cat had come in with no one aboard,” said park ranger Brad Keitzman.

At 5:15 p.m., Keitzman said, the state beach lifeguards called the Harbor Patrol, which dispatched a boat in search of the missing crew.

In addition, he said, two young men launched the Hobie Cat from the beach and joined the hunt.

The search was astoundingly short.

“While the Harbor Patrol left the harbor, a vessel radioed in that it had picked up two people,” said Keitzman.

Joe Mishica, who was on duty with the Harbor Patrol, said by the time the patrol boat caught up with the Hobie Cat, the rescue boat also sailed up with the couple aboard. It was then 5:45 p.m.

Mishica said the rescued couple looked very serious after the ordeal, which Mishica blamed on “just a lapse in judgment on their part.”

“I think they realized that if any of the circumstances had been different, they would have been real difficult to find,” he said. “It would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack out there.”