Faulty Radio Cited in Men’s Drowning

A glitch in a radio transmitter caused rescuers to lose valuable time in locating a fishing boat that recently sank in the Pacific Ocean off San Nicholas Island, leading to the drowning of three men, Coast Guard officials said Monday.

The boat may have been located within 20 minutes and its three-member crew saved had their ship’s emergency radio functioned properly, said Coast Guard Lt. Kathy Moore, the chief investigator in the April 17 sinking of the Lindy Jane. The drowning victims were Tam Duong, 29, of Oxnard; Tan Le, 34; and San Nguyen, 32, both of Pomona.

At 3:25 a.m. the day of the accident, the Coast Guard began receiving weak and broken distress calls from a crew member aboard the Lindy Jane. “They were in dire, dire, dire straits as soon as they got on the radio. It was already an emergency situation for them,” Moore said.

About 30 minutes later, the crew member radioed again to say the boat was sinking about seven miles north of the island. “They said the water was almost all the way up, and in one minute they were going down,” Moore said.

A global positioning satellite picked up radio transmissions from the boat at 4:07 a.m. That should have been helpful for rescuers aboard two Coast Guard helicopters. But Moore’s investigation found that the device sent out inaccurate information.

“The first transmission gave three different locations, and each location was 30 miles from the others,” Moore said.

Compounding the rescue effort was inaccurate information about the boat’s position provided by the panicked crew of the Lindy Jane.

A break came at 9:12 a.m. when rescuers again picked up a signal from the boat’s radio. It said the boat was 15 miles from where crews were searching. Within 20 minutes, rescuers aboard one of the helicopters found the fishermen.

“If the [first radio] signal would have been accurate, I think it would have made a great deal of difference,” Moore said.

She said the cause of the tragedy will never be known because the fiberglass boat sits on the ocean floor in more than 300 feet of water and is not likely to be salvaged.