Man is missing after boat sinks

A Phoenix man is missing after a boat thought to be his crashed into rocks in Corona del Mar on Wednesday.

Rescue workers on Thursday found a floating bag of prescription bottles that belonged to William Eugene Ott, 61, and other items in the water near the west jetty, but they haven’t determined whether he was on the boat when it crashed Wednesday.

Ott’s wife said he left Cabrillo Marina in San Pedro on Tuesday for the Santa Barbara Islands, Orange County Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said. Both locations are north of Newport Beach, so it’s unclear why his boat would have ended up by the Wedge. A white Ford truck belonging to Ott was parked in the lot at Cabrillo Marina.

Witnesses on their own boat radioed authorities when they saw Ott’s 30-foot sailboat hit the rocks, but they didn’t report seeing anyone on board, Harbor Patrol Sgt. Fritz von Rettberg said.

“The fact that no distress call was issued prior to him striking that jetty seems unusual,” von Rettberg said. “It indicates that he may have fallen off earlier or experienced some emergency prior to him hitting the rocks.”

Authorities have considered several scenarios of what happened to Ott: He had health problems at sea and fell overboard; he was trapped on the boat in the crash; or he left the boat for some reason and took off in a dinghy, which is usually attached to larger boats. No dinghy was found near the crash site or in surrounding waters, Amormino said.

Authorities searched 280 square miles of water Wednesday, and Harbor Patrol deputies may continue searching on their regular runs around Newport, Sunset Beach and Dana Point. If Ott fell in the water, officials said, it’s unlikely he survived the 57-degree temperature for long.

The boat broke into several pieces, sank and could not be retrieved because of treacherous water conditions. The weather Wednesday was windy and a small-craft advisory — for boats up to 100 feet — was in effect.

“We’re confident that it is the boat, not because of a registration number found, but due to the type of debris — the pills and the keys,” found on Corona del Mar State Beach, dispatcher Brian Stanley said.

The crash was the second accident at the jetties in about a week. On April 10, Yi Ni Kwong of Irvine and Sean Shungfei Yeh of Fremont were fishing on the east jetty when they were swept away by large waves. Yeh’s body was found among the rocks below Inspiration Point on April 13, but Kwong has not been found.