Sailboat adrift in the Catalina channel (Southern California) - July 12 2020

[marke14]

Hi everybody - long time, no see.

My wife and I have been sailing a bit this summer - as we have the boat in the water, and we're basically locked down still, it presents a great place to "go" and still be responsible in terms of staying away from others due to coronavirus concerns.

Anyway we were offshore yesterday (Sunday July 12) out of the Los Angeles harbor (Angel's Gate). On our way back in around 1:30 or so, we heard someone on channel 16 talking with the CG. They reported a seemingly abandoned, 30-40 sailing yacht towing a "half submerged" dinghy. He said he had circled the boat twice, hailing them, and didn't see nor hear anything. The CG had them switch channels, after which we heard that the CG was "aware" of the boat.

We continued in and then were caught up with putting the boat away etc. and heard no more. I checked on The Log and local newspapers etc. but haven't seen or heard anything.

Any local So Cal folks hear anything about this yesterday?

 

[Rick D]

We were monitoring 16 on the way back to the mainland, but at 1:30 we were very busy dodging jet skis, go fast boats, rental craft, and a parasailor while furling & dropping sails, so I may have missed it .

 

[marke14]

Yeah Rick, we had a great wind angle yesterday and were pretty much on the ferry route heading south towards Two Harbors. I know because we had to keep a sharper than usual lookout dead ahead as we had tons of inbound traffic coming nose-on! It was a busy weekend on the water so it seemed.

We were only perhaps 3 or 4 NM out from Angel's Gate at max, it was a short sailing day for us. So we weren't close enough to see the boat even via binoculars.

I heard the guy who reported it call out the boat's name but I didn't hear it clearly. It was a single word I recall, assuming I heard him correctly.