Marlin Fisherman Angling for Cure

There was chaos on the water, but during the nighttime awards ceremony there was silence enough to hear tears drop--and they were falling like rain.

On the water, in the shimmering Sea of Cortez not far from Cabo San Lucas, Bill Erfman of Denver struggled first with a 162-pound yellowfin tuna and then with a 579-pound black marlin. Together, they wrenched his muscles for nearly seven hours.

“Rumor was, he couldn’t even comb his hair the next day,” says Chuck Faith, foundation chairman for the annual Pete Lopiccola Memorial marlin tournament.

Erfman won last weekend’s tournament, but the children of Cabo and the cancer research center at UC San Diego are the real winners, thanks largely to 16-year-old Patrick Owsley of San Diego, whose emotional speech on the sand of the Hacienda Beach Resort brought the house down.

Owsley, happily sporting a full head of blond hair with his leukemia in remission, was only 10 when he found out he had the often-deadly form of cancer.

He painfully recalled before a crowd of 350 his first chemotherapy session and how it made him so sick he threw up in every bush while walking from the hospital to his parents’ car.

He talked about losing all his hair and having to deal with mean and inconsiderate schoolmates; about the cutting and probing of doctors, and about how his parents would have to plan family vacations near hospitals that catered to young cancer patients.

“Even I was tearing up, and I couldn’t turn and face anyone else who was crying because I knew I would start sobbing,” says Faith, acknowledging that this was the very reason Owsley was flown down and put on stage. “We did it to get people to empty their pocketbooks.”

It worked.

This year’s event raised $75,000 to help disadvantaged children in Cabo and about $125,000 for the UC San Diego cancer research center.

During a special raffle, it was hoped $21,000 could be raised to pay for chemotherapy treatments for Thalia Perez, 7, who recently was found to have a tumor in her stomach. The raffle raised only $18,000, but those in attendance chipped in the difference.

Terri Brodeau, event secretary, won the raffle’s grand prize, a 25-foot sailboat. She donated it back to be raffled again, she says, “so we can raise more money for the kids.”

In 12 years, the tournament has raised more than $700,000, giving parents of some of Cabo’s more unfortunate children hope and, in many cases, giving the children a new lease on life.

The money flowing north of the border and into the Pete Lopiccola Leukemia Research Foundation is at the very least a drop in the bucket toward the ultimate goal of finding a cure for a form of cancer that will kill about 21,000 people this year in the United States alone.

In terms of popularity, the “For Pete’s Sake” tournament pales in comparison to the big-money event it follows: the Bisbee Black & Blue, during which $2.3 million in prize money is the lure (although in fairness, the Bisbee event donates a considerable amount to charity as well).

The much lower-key Pete Lopiccola event is named after a well-liked fisherman from San Diego who spent much of his time as a skipper in Cabo San Lucas. He kept news of his illness a secret, refusing treatment, as long as he could.

He died in 1988, six weeks after his cancer was finally diagnosed. More than 400 attended his burial at sea, at which time his friends vowed to fight the disease that claimed Lopiccola’s life two days before his 30th birthday.

The prizes aren’t anything on the scale of the Bisbee event, mostly fishing reels, sunglasses, gift certificates.

But people have good reason for making the annual late October pilgrimage from as far north as Alaska and as far east as New York.

They come, explains the 47-year-old Faith, “Because everybody has their own Petey. I lost my father to cancer when I was only 21, and doing this just makes me feel better.”

*

If Erfman has a Petey, he’ll probably hand him the rod next time he hooks up.

The big tuna Erfman caught dived and circled stubbornly, as big tuna do, for 45 minutes before giving so much as an inch. As it slowly came up, the black marlin appeared on the surface and at one point took a swipe at the tuna with its bill.

While one crew member was gaffing the tuna, another was baiting another rod with a dead dorado. He handed the rod to Erfman, and another battle ensued. It lasted 5 hours 40 minutes, and when the marlin began to tire a large shark appeared nearby to give it new life.

A sweat-soaked Erfman managed to get the marlin to the boat unscathed. But he wimped out and chose not to try to bait the shark.

“I talked to him today in Mexico and he said he still can’t comb his hair,” Faith said Wednesday afternoon.

BAJA BEAT

* Just as they were when Mexico’s 150-peso tourist fee went into effect in July, prospective visitors to Baja California are concerned and confused over the announcement by Mexico that the government will collect substantial refundable deposits on all vehicles entering the country beginning Dec. 1 in an attempt to prevent the illegal sale of U.S. cars in Mexico. What hasn’t been widely reported is that this program does not include visitors to Baja.

“Our state and the entire peninsula is exempt [from the deposit program],” assures Juan Tintos Funcke, secretary of tourism in Baja California.

Tintos says the collecting of deposits in mainland Mexico--$400 for cars made in 1994 or earlier, $600 for models 1995 to 1998 and $800 for those made this year or later--is intended to stop the fairly common but illegal practice of Mexican residents living in the U.S. bringing mostly older U.S.-registered vehicles into Mexico’s interior and selling them to friends or relatives and returning home by plane or bus.

* Mexico on Wednesday published in the Diario Oficial (its version of the federal registry) its intent to close all areas above latitude 23 degrees north to fishing for yellowfin tuna. This area basically includes all waters north of Cabo San Lucas, and the closure will be in effect until the end of the year.

The next step is to inform affected parties, and while crews of commercial seiners and bait boats undoubtedly have already been informed, San Diego’s long-range fleet had not been as of midafternoon. The closure does not include the prolific waters near the Revillagigedo Islands well south of Cabo. If indeed the fleet is told to stop targeting yellowfin off Baja, however, it will be left without its primary quarry on eight- and 10-day trips.

* Scuba divers and fishermen visiting La Paz are expected to benefit from the sinking later this month of two Chinese long-line vessels on the western lee of Espiritu Santo Island outside La Paz Bay. The 300-foot Fang Ming and 180-foot Lapas III, confiscated five years ago for illegally fishing in Mexican waters, will be sunk Nov. 18-19 and come to rest about 60 feet beneath the surface, acting as artificial reefs that will undoubtedly attract a wide variety of marine life.

The project, a cooperative one involving the Operadores de Buceo del Mar de Cortez (Diving Operators of the Sea of Cortez), the conservation group Pronatura and the federal government, will be especially attractive to scuba divers. Among the first to dive the new reefs will be Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, a fairly avid diver.

DROPPING IN

They’re psyching up for Round 2 of the Quiksilver/Maverick’s tournament at the thunderous break near Santa Cruz. Last year’s inaugural event was won by Darryl Virostko, whose nickname is “Flea” because he looks like one racing down the faces of the enormous crushers, but doesn’t everyone?

The holding period begins Sunday and runs through March 31, but it’s probably safe to say it won’t go off until after the Triple Crown on the North Shore of Oahu that runs into December. What Maverick’s tournament director Jeff Clark is shooting for is a northwest groundswell of 15 to 18 feet, which translates into 30-foot faces “and beyond.”

The invitation list again includes mostly Maverick’s regulars and area locals, but spicing things up this year will be six-time world champion Kelly Slater. “I’m stoked to be in the contest, and it’s definitely a priority of mine this winter,” he says. Slater is also scheduled to surf all three Triple Crown events. The last one is the Pipe Masters, which concludes on or before Dec. 21.

On the list of alternates at Mavericks is Sarah Gerhardt, who last winter became the first woman to “legitimately” surf there, Clark says. The Santa Cruz resident negotiated a 25-foot face last February and in March she caught “three genuine bombs.”

Honorary invitees are Mark Foo, a noted big-wave rider who drowned during his first session at Maverick’s, and Todd Chesser, who was killed during a mammoth day at Waimea Bay on the North Shore.

Maverick’s is not the least bit spectator friendly. The best place to view the spectacle is probably on the Web at https://www.mavsurfer.com.

WINDING UP

Anyone who has fished regularly out of Islandia in Mission Bay will probably be saddened to learn that Tone Simpkins, skipper of the Dolphin, died late last week of an apparent heart attack between half-day trips. He was 36.

He is survived by his wife, Melanie, his daughter, Alexis, and son, Jake. A memorial service is scheduled Saturday at the landing at 1551 West Mission Bay Dr. Donations may be made to the Tone Simpkins Memorial Trust Fund at any Washington Mutual Bank branch.