Facing Life-and-Death Decisions

As the swells towered over them, five men clinging to a slender wooden strut bobbing like a toothpick in the frigid Santa Barbara Channel faced a horrific choice.

Three hours earlier, rough seas had swamped their outrigger canoe and they couldn’t keep it afloat. The 50-degree waters had already claimed their first casualty, 50-year-old John Devlin. Gripped by hypothermia, he drowned as his friends held him.

Devlin’s partners hung on to the 40-foot pontoon they’d unlashed from their stricken canoe and considered their course of action: Stay and risk death a mile offshore, or swim for help through the wind-whipped seas that had wrecked their sleek Polynesian craft and kept most other vessels tied to their moorings.

“Don’t go!” shouted Ben Taitai, 50, the owner of the doomed canoe and the crew’s senior member. “We’re a team. Stay here!”

But Justin Heard felt compelled to leave, and half an hour later, so did Scott Sullenger.

“I’ve got to go,” he said simply, according to accounts from several people who knew the accident victims. “It looks like we’re all going to die. At least I’m going in to get help.”

Taitai could do nothing but watch as his friend set out for shore and disappeared into the 6-foot swells, he told Sullenger’s mother, Arlene Sullenger, by phone Monday, according to an account she gave in an interview.

Heard was later rescued by the Ventura Harbor Patrol. Sullenger, however, is presumed dead; the Coast Guard called off its search for him at 12:40 p.m. Monday, about 24 hours after it began.

“Due to the amount of time he was in the water and the type of clothing he was wearing, his survivability was only so many hours,” said Capt. George Wright of the Coast Guard’s Long Beach station. “The Coast Guard does not search for people who we believe may be deceased.”

Shrimp fishermen passing through later on Sunday picked up Taitai, Mike Davis, 29, and Faustino Rico, along with Devlin’s body.

Taitai and Davis were treated and released at local hospitals. On Monday, Heard and Rico were recuperating at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard.

As friends and family members absorbed news of the tragedy, they sketched a picture of a tight-knit fraternity that delighted in challenging the sea. Setting themselves apart from the more conventional organized paddling groups that have flourished in recent years, they created the invitation-only Channel Islands Outrigger Canoe Club. They were not afraid to challenge big seas, and they disdained safety measures such as life jackets.

“These are not wussy guys,” said Frank Ramirez, a longtime local paddler and a friend of the men in Sunday’s accident. “They have a reputation.”

Sullenger’s sister, Lori Partridge of Oxnard, said the men loved the water.

“They went out all the time,” she said. “And if you ever saw them talking about it, you knew it was in their blood.

“They’d have barbecues in each other’s backyards. In the mornings, they’d go out and pray and hit the water.”

On Sunday, they launched their boat from Channel Islands Harbor about 8 a.m. Although stiff winds that morning kept outrigger crews off the water a few miles up the coast in Ventura, it was relatively calm in Oxnard, according to Sgt. Tom Bazemore of the Channel Islands Harbor Patrol.

After a bracing 3 1/2-mile jaunt to oil platform Gina, the men ran into fierce east winds on the way back, the survivors told acquaintances. The boat flipped, and even after it was righted, it kept taking on water--a sign of possible leaks in the flotation chambers, according to some veteran paddlers.

The men detached the boat’s pontoon, but the winds and swift currents blew them back out to sea and forced each to make a life-and-death decision.

Rico is a fixture--as was Sullenger--at Channel Islands Vineyard Church in Oxnard, a nondenominational Christian church that features rock bands rather than a choir. Dozens of their fellow congregants walked the beaches of Oxnard on Monday afternoon, their eyes fixed on the sea.

“We are still praying,” said pastor Bill Coulter. “You hear stories about people who live out on the ocean for weeks. We’re not giving up yet. We are still praying.”

Coulter said the men were experienced and highly skilled in rough seas. Sometimes they would paddle to the Channel Islands twice a week, he said.

Both were also active in church food drives for the poor.

“We’ve lost a gem,” Coulter said of Sullenger. “We’ve lost a real gem.”

Sullenger, 35, was a 1982 graduate of Oxnard High School. He was vice president of Gard Containers Inc., a company that manufactures agricultural containers and supplies.

John Devlin, known as “Big John,” was about to retire from the construction business. He and his wife planned to move to Kauai, where their son, Brett, is also an avid canoeist, according to Ramirez.

The accident stunned paddlers throughout Southern California.

In its 40-year history, the 1,200-member Kalifornia Outrigger Assn. (KOA)--so named because Hawaiians build their boats from koa wood--has not experienced a fatality, according to club spokesman Bud Hohl.

The organization includes 22 local clubs from San Diego to Pismo Beach. None of the accident victims belonged to the group, although Taitai had been a member of Ventura’s Hokuloa Outrigger Club some years ago, Hohl said.

“He’s very well-known,” said Ann Thompson, a Hokuloa board member. She and others described Taitai as a proud man accustomed to tackling the sea as his Samoan ancestors did.

“He’s come to a couple of our meetings and laughed at us for our rules and regulations and dues,” she said.

Like other KOA clubs, Hokuloa competes in races. Life jackets are always stowed on the club’s boats--except during certain competitions in which escort boats are about 100 feet away.

Although state law requires life vests on every vessel as well as a life ring on those over 16 feet, none was found at the accident scene, according to authorities.

Those who knew them say the men did not ordinarily use protective gear.

“They didn’t have any life jackets on,” said Lori Partridge, Sullenger’s sister. “They were well aware of the issue. It was like motorcycle people who don’t want to wear helmets.”

Times staff writers Daryl Kelley and Hilary E. MacGregor and Times Community News reporter Anna Gorman contributed to this story.