2 Men Rescued After Boat Sinks

Two men were rescued Sunday after their 21-foot cabin cruiser sank off Anacapa Island, Coast Guard officials said.

Most of the vessel was submerged at 2 p.m. when the crew of a passing boat plucked Zohrab Izakelian of North Hollywood and an unidentified friend from the water and sent a mayday message to the Coast Guard, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Marc Fischer.

Officials would not release the name of Izakelian’s friend and did not have the names of the rescuers. Officials said the recreational boat that helped the men was based in either Channel Islands or Ventura.

“These guys were pretty shaken up when they got back here,” Fischer said of the victims. “They were really cold. If they’d been out there too much longer, they could have gotten . . . hypothermia.”

Izakelian towed the cabin cruiser from North Hollywood on a trailer Sunday and put in at Channel Islands Harbor, Fisher said. Later that afternoon, either Izakelian or his friend felt sick and stopped the boat to let his companion take the helm.

That’s when the nearly 30-year-old boat, the Jackobson, began sinking rapidly, forcing the men to plunge into the cold waters off Anacapa Island. No life jackets were aboard and the men clung only to a small ring-shaped flotation device.

Officials are unsure why the boat took on water, but Fischer speculated a broken hose or a forgotten plug may have been the cause.

The area where Izakelian’s boat sank has water 900 feet deep, Fischer said, probably rendering the sunken vessel unrecoverable. The boat contained 30 gallons of gasoline when it sank, he said.

Several other recreational vessels assisted in the rescue, Fischer said. The Coast Guard sent a 41-foot rescue boat with a four-person crew from Channel Islands Harbor to retrieve the men and take them to the Oxnard Coast Guard station, where they were given blankets. The men did not require medical treatment.

“They just wanted to go home,” Fischer said.