9 Months Adrift, College’s Boat Lands on Island

Apparently, the Bonaire had some life left after all.

Abandoned last July by a novice group of Orange Coast College sailing students and a professional crew, the disabled 66-foot ketch turned up on a tropical island in the Central Pacific--about 3,000 miles from where it was abandoned.

The unmanned sailboat had an unceremonious greeting from residents of the island of Nonouti, who stripped the vessel of everything from radios to life rafts to a toilet.

“I asked them why they were taking it apart,” John Francis, 22, a Peace Corps volunteer on the island said in a telephone interview this week. “They all were saying, ‘Since the people didn’t want the boat, it’s ours now.’”

The Bonaire made headlines last summer when frantic Orange County relatives tried to get word on crew members, who waited anxiously for a few days until they were able to hitch rides on passing commercial ships bound for Panama. After it was abandoned, many people, including the crew, assumed it would sink.

As it turned out, the 24-year-old racer, donated to the college in November 2000, drifted for about nine months until it washed onto a coral reef about 200 yards from the beach of Nonouti--an island just south of the equator and east of the international date line. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati, formerly known as the Gilbert Islands.

Francis said the boat appeared to be in fair shape when he first inspected it about 24 hours after he heard a local radio report about the vessel becoming marooned in early April. Fine, except for a hole in the hull he believes was caused by landing on the jagged reef.

“I don’t think it could have made it all that way with a hole in the bottom,” said Francis, whose father, Jim Francis of Jacksonville, Fla., became curious about the Bonaire and spent weeks searching the Internet for information before finding news articles about the crew and the ship.

The elder Francis e-mailed The Times this week with the rest of the saga of the Bonaire, and provided a telephone number for his son, who was reached in Kiribati’s capital, Tarawa, where he was attending a Peace Corps conference.

The Bonaire left Hawaii on July 15 with an eight-man crew--five OCC students and three experienced yachtsman--to return to the mainland. On July 23, about 800 miles off of Hawaii, the step supporting the 80-foot mainmast collapsed.

With the rigging suddenly loosened, the mast dropped and swung around, leaving the crew able to exert little control.

Fearing that the mast might punch a hole through the hull and leave them stranded, crew members sought help from passing ships. The first group found a ride July 25. The others left shortly afterward, and all arrived in Panama--lacking passports--in early August.

Doug Bennett, director of the Orange Coast College foundation that owned the ketch, said he was amazed to learn of the Bonaire’s 3,000-mile journey.

The vessel was one of several used by the college, which has one of the nation’s largest nonprofit sailing schools, with more than 6,000 students.

Bennett said the college’s insurance company negotiated a reward for returning the boat to Los Angeles. “When the boat wasn’t found in two months, the insurance company paid us off in full.”

The insurance company’s broker said there is no interest in salvaging what remains of the vessel.