Lost Brothers Are Rescued After Scary Night at Sea

OXNARD — Two brothers got more excitement than they bargained for on a Jet Ski outing that began in Oxnard’s Mandalay Bay on Thursday morning but turned into a harrowing all-night experience when they became lost at sea in a dense fog.

Curious sharks swam within 20 feet of their ski vehicles, which had run out of fuel. But after a few spine-tingling moments, the predators disappeared into the deep.

“I kept my feet up when I saw them,” said Danny Hamilton, 52, a Santa Barbara County Fire Department captain. “I’ve been in shark-fishing tournaments. I respect sharks.”

Much of the night, the brothers said, they were kept company by a frolicking, chattering school of dolphins that appeared fascinated by the spectacle of two individuals bobbing along on lonely, fog-shrouded waters, seven miles from shore.

“You could hear them chattering,” said Dave Hamilton, 36, of Oxnard, a truck driver for a laboratory instruments firm. “Then they’d jump and slap the water.”

In an interview at Dave Hamilton’s waterside home on Mandalay Bay, the two experienced seamen said that besides being startled by menacing sharks, they were downright embarrassed by their misadventure.

“We went out of here with nothing, no radio, no flares, no compass,” Danny Hamilton said. “The worst scenario you could think up, we did it.”

The brothers were rescued about 7 a.m. Friday by a vacationing Temple City couple, Alan Massey and his wife, who were piloting a 24-foot sailboat on a vacation to Anacapa Island, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

The two stranded men were found floating off the coast of Malibu.

They had been the object of an intensive search by the Coast Guard and private boats, triggered by a call to authorities from Dave Hamilton’s wife.

Both were found in good condition, although Danny Hamilton was suffering from slight hypothermia even though he was wearing a partial wet suit.

Thursday began simply enough, the brothers said, when they sat astride their skis, which can attain speeds of 50 m.p.h. and which have a fuel range of about 30 miles.

Leaving Dave Hamilton’s home on one of a maze of waterways leading to the ocean, the brothers took off on their motor-driven skis. They cruised around Ventura Harbor, even helping some people move a stalled motor boat. Then, in the afternoon, they decided to make a loop around Platform Gina, an oil platform about three miles offshore between Oxnard and Anacapa Island.

That’s when the fog began rolling in and the brothers became disoriented. Later, the gas ran out--first in Danny’s vehicle, then Dave’s.

“We were a good 20 miles off where we thought we were,” Dave Hamilton said. “We thought we were between Mandalay Bay and Oxnard. But, in reality, we were moving southbound in a shipping lane.”