Sinking Was More Than Water Under the Bridge

On the morning his glass-bottom boat gave a final groan and then sunk in the Pacific Ocean, Rick Parker could only watch from 25 yards away as the unimaginable happened.

It had all been a big adventure that he was sure would have a happy ending. A restaurateur in Martinez in Northern California, Parker, 55, wanted a boat as a second restaurant in the town harbor. In April 2005, he found the one he wanted: a 109-foot paddle-wheeler built in 1929 and launched in 1931.

Christened the Phoenix and moored in Newport Harbor, the boat seemed too good to be true. His wife, Kathryn, a chef, loved its teak and oak finish. He loved that a boat that size only drew 3 feet of water, perfect for the, uh, rather shallow harbor in Martinez. The decks were right, the restaurant space was right, the kitchen was right. The smokestacks just happened to be exactly where the ventilators would need to be for the kitchen stove hoods.

Haggling over the asking price of $350,000, Parker and the owner went back and forth for months. They finally closed the deal in February.

“It was just one of those things where everything fit,” Parker says. “It’s not that often in life where everything fits, where you don’t have to make things fit.”

Besides that, Parker loved the history of the old boat. For six decades, the boat had ferried passengers from the mainland to Catalina Island. Not really glass-bottom, the Phoenix was so described because of its eight 3-by-6-foot glass panels on its floor. Above them, viewing wells had been built into the hull -- again, perfectly positioned because they were above the water line.

“Whoever designed that knew what they were doing,” Parker says.

And there was one more thing: “I’m a boater,” Parker says. “I’ve loved boats all my life. This particular boat was a side-wheeler, a paddle-wheeler. I always had a fondness for side-wheelers over stern-wheelers.”

So, yes, the Phoenix was a potential restaurant. But to Parker, it was much more. “I saw it as a boat,” Parker says. “Kathryn saw it as a restaurant. I would have lived on it if I hadn’t put a restaurant on it.”

But there was the matter of getting it from Orange County to Martinez.

He thought about hiring a tugboat company, but insurance costs go up when it comes to transporting wooden boats. A tug company said it would put the boat on a barge, but that was cost-prohibitive.

Parker decided that he and three friends could motor the boat up the coast. They spent two weeks prepping it, and on Saturday afternoon, June 10, they left Newport Beach. It wasn’t a slapdash crew. Besides Parker, two of the other three had maritime experience. The captain had circumnavigated the globe several times. And there were harbors all along the route.

The group decided it “might be an adventure to drive it up the coast. We’d all been to sea more than once, so we figured what the hell.”

Expecting a seven-day trip, they took precautions. “Past Point Conception, it can get very rough,” Parker says. So, they loaded up rafts, water-survival suits, an emergency beacon signal and new electronic equipment. “We figured we’d get some rough seas, but we were all looking forward to that. The weather window we had was a good window.”

When they pulled out of Newport Harbor, Parker says, he got an incredible rush. “It’s almost like buying a brand-new Ferrari and driving it out of the showroom.”

Eighteen hours out, off the coast of Malibu, Parker awakened to work his shift at the wheel. The microwave to warm his morning coffee was on the fritz, meaning the generator wasn’t working. Capt. John Jordon told Parker he’d take a look. He returned shortly to say the boat was taking on water. The engine room was filling with water.

Parker’s first thought was to head for shore and repair it. But Jordon said moving forward would suck more water in. He said calling in a mayday was the better option.

The Coast Guard dispatcher took their information and told them to abandon ship. Parker says the dispatcher told them: “The only thing we’ve got is a frigate, and it’s 4 1/2 hours from you. You’re going down.”

Physically leaving the boat was doable. Psychologically, that was something else. Now, more than five weeks later, Parker says he’s giving his first interview.

“One thing people don’t realize is that a boat cries as it goes down,” he says. “You get the sound of air trapped in a boat forced out of the planks, and it sounds like a little kid crying. It hurts. I was teary-eyed.”

He remembers the demise clearly. “We were in calm seas, with 3-foot rolls. The bow dipping down initially, a roll came over the bow and the railings on the bow were just blowing off by the hydraulics of the water.

“A second roll came into the main cabin, and I swear to God, I thought a bomb went off. It blew the sides out of the boat. Then the ass end dropped down and the boat sat there for an hour or an hour and a half. When it sunk, the stern dropped down, the bow was up in the water 10 feet and just slid out of sight.”

By 10:45 a.m., the boat had gone under.

Parker and his friends were brought in to Marina del Rey. Some news crews wanted to talk to him, but he had nothing to say.

He’s thinking about buying a ferry or a tugboat as a potential replacement for his restaurant idea. Not that he’s completely over losing the Phoenix.

“It’s like losing your wife,” he says. “I don’t know any other way of putting it. It’s like losing a member of your family. If you like boats, love boats, then you understand exactly what I’m saying. If you don’t know boats, then you won’t understand. It’s the sea and the boat. It’s the ride, if you will. The sights, the sounds, the smells. It’s like nothing you can imagine.”

He’s not regretting anything. The boat checked out, the crew was experienced, and all was right with the world when they pulled out of Orange County.

From what he’d already told me, I knew the answer before I asked if he was thinking about his business venture going down as the boat sunk. “At that moment,” he says, “I didn’t give a ... about the restaurant. The Phoenix was a unique boat.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.