Local anglers reel in a big one

Noaki Schwartz

NEWPORT BEACH -- A pair of prominent residents boated down to Mexico

hoping for a few halibut steaks and instead reeled in a $500,000 bale of

marijuana.

“We saw this thing floating and didn’t know what it was,” said Royal S.

Radtke, former president of the Corona del Mar Chamber of Commerce. “We

pulled it aboard to see what it was and when we cut it open, it was [100

pounds of] high-grade marijuana.”

Andy Crean, owner of Villa Nova restaurant, had taken his father’s

$10.5-million boat down to Mexico for a three-week vacation with Radtke.

They were about 12 miles off the shore of Cabo San Lucas when they saw

what appeared to be a bale of taped hay floating in the ocean, said

Crean.

They hooked the object, pulled it in and cut it open.

“We didn’t know if it was money or a dead body,” Radtke said.

But once they ripped through the tape, the odor made it abundantly clear

what it was.

“We were freaked and started laughing hysterically.” Radtke recalled,

adding that there were 20 individually wrapped blocks of marijuana in the

bale.

They immediately called the U.S. Coast Guard, which arrived at the

behemoth yacht, Donna C. III, waiting for their catch.

Donning surgical gloves, masks and blue hospital-like gowns, Coast Guard

seamen told Radtke and Crean to simply throw the bale of marijuana into

their Zodiac, which is basically a small, rubber boat.

“It was like they were handling the plague or something,” Crean said.

“The bundle hit the [Zodiac’s] tube and all 20 packages went flying.”

The deft seamen scrambled and collected all the blocks.

After the excitement was over -- and vacation photographs, with an issue

of the Daily Pilot, were taken -- they made their way back to shore.

Crean told friends on the mainland that they had caught a “definite

tournament winner, but released it to the Coast Guard.”