Patrolling the parade

Deepa Bharath

Tuesday night at Newport Harbor, with no more wind than a gentle

breeze and smooth water, provided a perfect backdrop for the Newport

Harbor Christmas Boat Parade.

Still, Orange County Sheriff’s Department harbor patrol deputies

drifted around with watchful eyes, looking for speeding boaters and

overenthusiastic revelers hanging from the back of their boats.

“It’s all really pretty,” said Deputy Jim Slikker, with one hand on

the wheel of his fireboat. “But it’s challenging for us to maneuver

through all these boats in the harbor.”

There have not been many serious accidents in the harbor during the

last few years, but these officers do run into occasional spills and

thrills as they did Tuesday night.

Slikker and his partner, Carlos Contreras, were responding to an

accident involving the Rapture, a large boat with several people partying

on board. Four guests, who wanted to get a better view of the parade, got

on a black inflatable boat and started drifting around.

“But then this other boat didn’t see them,” Contreras explained. “It

hit their inflatable, and two of them hurt their head and two others fell

into the water.”

No one was hurt in the incident except for a few bruises. But the

deputies say this is the type of accident that is common during the boat

parade.

The harbor patrol almost triples its staffing during the annual

holiday tradition. On a normal night, there would be only one fireboat

and one patrol boat out. On a parade night, that would expand to three

fireboats and two patrol boats.

The fireboats are a little bigger than the patrol boats and have a

gamut of firefighting and rescue equipment on board -- from hoses and

pumps that can remove up to 220 gallons of water per minute from a

sinking boat to oxygen tanks, a global positioning system and automated

external defibrillators used to shock heart attack victims.

The sheer number of boats also overwhelms the officers, Harbor Master

Marty Kasules said.

“Also, a lot of people on these boats are not familiar with the harbor

at night,” he said.

Slikker said the maze of Christmas lights and decorations can confuse

even a seasoned boater.

“You can completely miss signals coming from the boats because of the

Christmas lights,” he said. “It’s hard to tell if they’re coming or going

or making a turn.”

Deputy Richard Cedarstaff, who was also on duty Tuesday night, said he

has seen some wild incidents during the boat parade in his time.

Cedarstaff, who recently retired, still continues to work part-time

shifts.

“I think it was 1995,” he recalled. “There was a sport fishing boat

that had a bunch of kids on it. They went on a ride all day, then dropped

off the kids on a dock.”

Then, just as they fueled up and left the dock, the boat exploded and

got wedged between the fueling dock and the sea wall, Cedarstaff said.

“A boy and a girl got blown into the water, and one was trapped on

board,” he said. “And it was a dangerous one for us, too, to get the boat

out with all those gas tanks close by.”

But that type of incident has been rare at the boat parade, Slikker

said.

“Our job is to basically prevent incidents,” he said. “We’re not here

to ruin anybody’s parade. We just want to make sure everybody has a good

time and gets home safely.”

* Deepa Bharath covers public safety and courts. She may be reached at

(949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .