Search for missing sailor is suspended
Because of deteriorating ocean conditions, rescue teams temporarily suspended their search Thursday afternoon for a 61-year-old man who might be adrift in a skiff after his sailboat broke up on a Newport Beach jetty amid fierce winds.
“As far as going into the water, it’s too dangerous,” Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said of the search conducted since Wednesday by divers and Coast Guard ships.
Amormino said water visibility was less than three feet and large swells kept sending pieces of the sunken boat against rescue divers.
Earlier Thursday, he said, divers found the sunken boat -- which lay at a depth of 30 feet and had been snapped into three major pieces -- but did not find any bodies.
Hopes of rescuing William Eugene Ott of Phoenix had risen after two flares were reportedly spotted about three miles off Dana Point -- one at 10:33 p.m. Wednesday and another at 4:45 a.m. Thursday.
After searching a 280-square-mile area Thursday, however, the Coast Guard turned the rescue effort back to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Amormino said.
Amormino said the flare sightings were unconfirmed.
A witness who saw the boat foundering Wednesday said it appeared to be unmanned. After hitting the rocks three times in high wind and surf, the vessel “sank almost right away,” said Rocky Orr, who was walking on the beach with his wife at the time.
The identity of the 30-foot sailboat’s owner was traced from a bottle of prescription medication that floated to the surface after the boat went down near the Wedge surf spot, said Sgt. Fritz Von Rettberg, the Harbor Patrol watch commander.
The man’s wife told sheriff’s deputies that she had last heard from her husband Tuesday as he left Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro, heading toward the Channel Islands.
She also said her husband had more than 30 years’ sailing experience and always carried a skiff aboard his boat.
“We did not see any trace of any skiff,” Amormino said. “Whether there was one or not, we don’t know.”
Weather permitting, he said, the search will resume today.
*
david.haldane@latimes.com
Editorial assistant Nardine Saad contributed to this report.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
