Waves rip, sink ship off Corona del Mar

Unmanned 30-foot craft, moored east of harbor entrance, founders in heavy seas Monday.High winds and heavy rains sank an unmanned boat off Corona del Mar State Beach Monday morning, but public safety officials reported few other weather-related problems in Newport-Mesa.

Gusts of wind reached speeds of 50 mph, but Orange County got less than an inch of rain Sunday and Monday, said National Weather Service forecaster Stan Wasowski -- it just seemed like more.

The boat that went down was a 30-foot wooden sailboat with the name Nimbus that may have been based in the Port of Los Angeles, said Sgt. David Ginther of the Orange County Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol. It had been anchored east of the entrance to Newport Harbor near Corona del Mar State Beach for about the past two weeks, he said.

Officials are still trying to track down the boat’s owner.

The large waves dumped more water on the boat than it could handle, and it went down around 10:30 a.m. For a time, about 15 feet of the mast were visible, but within a few hours the boat had broken up and some of the pieces had washed ashore.

Corona del Mar resident Kyle Anderson was out with his girlfriend to check the waves when the sailboat sank.

“The wind was really blowing and there were really big waves, so we kind of checked it out for awhile, and sure enough, a couple of big waves hit it and it went down,” he said.

Ginther said the Harbor Patrol had several calls about boats coming off their moorings in the morning, but by early afternoon the winds and the seas had calmed.

Between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., Costa Mesa was hit with power outages that affected some traffic signals on Newport and Harbor boulevards, Fairview Drive and a few other streets, said Costa Mesa Police Lt. Karl Schuler. Officers put out portable stop signs and helped direct traffic, and by noon most of the power had been restored, he said.