Boat

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - Luxury appointments abound in the 7,000-square-foot, 12-year-old Victorian-style mansion overlooking Great Bay, such as a marble fireplace that once graced a Biddle estate mansion, a crystal chandelier that at the touch of a button lowers from the 30-foot foyer ceiling for cleaning, and boat slips big enough to berth a pair of yachts. A "smart house" system controls window treatments, lighting, heating, air-conditioning, and music. Slate-covered turrets, little secret gardens, and gingerbread-laden porches make the exterior look more like Cape May than Ocean City.

Just downstream from an industrial recycling operation and a stone's throw from a sewage treatment plant, a fisherman casts his line toward the passing barge traffic and watches it drop into the Delaware River. A couple eating lunch watch curiously. "No way would I ever eat anything from there," the woman says. The fishers who frequent the pier in Camden's Waterfront South neighborhood have heard it all before. That they're crazy, that they're going to grow an extra head or get sick from eating what they catch.

In a harrowing 6 1/2-hour struggle for survival in the dark ocean, four Pennsylvania men clung to the bow of their capsized pleasure boat early yesterday after a collision that left two of their number dead. "We were scared to death," said Neil Sawick, 31. He said fear of sharks - and fear that the boat the men were clinging to would sink completely - plagued the survivors throughout the nighttime ordeal that began in the Atlantic about 14 miles east of Ocean City, N.J. The 29-foot boat, Reel Action, rammed a tugboat's towline about 1 a.m., Sawick said.

No further charges will be filed against an Eastern Regional High School teacher who was charged with recklessly operating a motorboat in an accident that killed fellow teacher Carril L. Moyer. "We just couldn't find the criminal negligence," said Douglas Parker, sheriff in Hamilton County, N.Y. Lawrence Kelly, 56, was driving the 16-foot motorboat that struck Moyer's boat about 11:40 a.m. Aug. 5 on Algonquin Lake in Wells, N.Y. Kelly could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The first time Jon Wright sailed in an America's Cup yacht race - in 1974 - the entire affair lasted five months. "We had a $1.5 million budget, we built one boat and we put it in the water in May," said Wright, who lives in Rosemont and runs a boat business in West Conshohocken. "We defended the cup in September. " Wright's fifth cup race - in 1987, when the San Diego Yacht Club boat Stars & Stripes won the trophy from Royal Perth Yacht Club in a classic battle on the Indian Ocean at Fremantle, Australia - was something different.

HAS OP-ED writer Flavia Colgan ("Adrift in the Swift Boat Swamp") registered herself as a 527 yet? I looked high and low but couldn't find the same sort of column written by Flavia about the abundance of 527s that have spent the best part of $60 million and a full year waging the same sort of attacks on President Bush. Her selective amnesia about who is allowed free speech is mind-numbing. Where was she when a movie that, while striving to make salient points, has been debunked to the point where it will released and catagorized under "fiction" at Blockbuster.

Among other things, Lorenzo Ricciardi has headed an advertising agency in Rome, worked as an assistant to film director Federico Fellini, labored as a professional fisherman, made documentaries and played Jesus Christ in Ben Hur, the cinematic biblical spectacular. More recently, while living on the African coast and working as a charter- boat captain (this after he blew most of the money he made in a stock- market killing), the white-bearded Italian was struck by an idea that would foster the most bizarre vocational gear-change of his life.

Two tourists remain missing tonight after a city-owned barge hit an amphibious duck boat as it plied the Delaware River off Penns Landing. Police divers were searching for a 16-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man, both tourists from Hungary, who were among 37 women and children plunged into the water. The unaccounted for passengers are feared to have been caught in the wreckage of the duck boat which sank in 40-feet of water. Thirty-five passengers survived with minor injuries and were recovered by police, fire, and Coast Guard vessels.

Stormy weather has slowed down a Coast Guard cutter that is towing a stricken recreational boat with six men aboard back to safe harbor. David Umberger, a Coast Guard spokesman, said the cutter is not expected to arrive at Atlantic City until late this afternoon, not this morning, as originally thought. The stormy weather is the cause, he said. The 32-foot Black Magic was found adrift about 120 miles east of Atlantic City Monday evening, 24 hours after the mother of the boat's owner reported it missing.

The Coast Guard yesterday released recordings of radio communications from the fatal Duck-boat crash in Philadelphia. The recordings were taken from the emergency channel recorded by the Coast Guard. A Duck boat with 37 people aboard became disabled in the Delaware River on July 7 and was struck by an unmanned city-owned barge being pushed by a tug. The Duck boat capsized and sank, killing two Hungarian tourists. Shortly before the crash, an unidentified man can be heard yelling for a boat to watch out. A few minutes later, the tug boat Caribbean Sea is heard telling the Coast Guard, "we are the ones that, I guess, capsized the Duck boat.

Katie Ewell feels her boat getting faster and faster, just in time for the Stotesbury Cup Regatta. "It's the biggest race of the year," Ewell, a senior at Bishop Eustace Prep, said of the annual regatta that will be held Friday and Saturday on the Schuylkill. Ewell and her teammates on the Bishop Eustace varsity eight boat hope to be in contention for a medal at the world's oldest and largest high school regatta. This year's event is expected to draw 5,000 athletes from 198 high schools competing in 925 boats.

The water ran out after the first day at sea. The boat engine quit on the second. Hien Cao, 22, clutched her 2-year-old daughter and 6-month-old son. They and 25 others had crowded onto a five-person fishing boat, the captain paid in gold to steer them to freedom. Now, the sun beating down as the vessel drifted off the southern coast of Vietnam, Cao felt numb. She'd taken this chance, this escape from a country that had become a prison, to give her children a better life.

Ten feet. Had Matthew R. Devlin walked that far, he could have alerted his tugboat captain that he was experiencing a family emergency, in all likelihood saving the lives of two Hungarian tourists who died in the July 2010 duck-boat accident. One minute. Had Devlin, the first mate, kept watch as the tug pushed a 250-foot barge down the Delaware River, that is all the time he would have needed to turn his boat to avoid the collision that killed Dora Schwendtner, 16, and Szabolcs Prem, 20. Two lives were lost because of failures both small and epic that day, leading to a $17 million settlement Wednesday for the families and 18 surviving passengers when the federal lawsuit suddenly ended after less than two days of testimony.

The Titan Boat parked in a lot off Kelly Drive near the finish line of the Schuylkill rowing course appears to be a nice vessel, with advanced technology keeping it light to move quickly through the water and four seats equipped to make all the rowers comfortable. But then you realize the boat held eight men who tried to set a world record for the fastest row across the Atlantic Ocean and you think: "Eight guys fit in this?" And when one of them was 6-foot-7 Toby Wallace, who spent half of his time over 34 days below deck, you shake and scratch your head at the same time.

During two days of competing in the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta, Purdue had to endure "a lot of hiccups," in the words of its coach. The Boilermakers sat their No. 3 seat on the men's varsity eight boat because of illness. They brought up a substitute from the junior varsity, which affected the JV. And in the varsity eight race, their boat struck a log in the river, knocking off the rudder and forcing the coxswain to stick his arm into the Schuylkill to make the turn at the Strawberry Mansion Bridge.

During two days of competing in the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta, Purdue had to endure "a lot of hiccups," in the words of its coach. The Boilermakers sat their No. 3 seat on the men's varsity eight boat because of illness. They brought up a substitute from the junior varsity, which affected the JV. And in the varsity eight race, their boat struck a log in the river, knocking off the rudder and forcing the coxswain to stick his arm into the Schuylkill to make the turn at the Strawberry Mansion Bridge.

Like their life-size counterparts, self-propelled toy boats can be an expensive hobby. To see just how expensive, take a look at some of the sea craft that Bertoia Auctions will offer beginning at 2 p.m. Saturday at the gallery in Vineland. At least 18 of the more than 150 vessels that dominate the 210-lot sale are expected to bring five-figure prices and at least one has a six-figure presale price estimate. The fleet was assembled by Richard T. "Dick" Claus, a 30-year collector who lives in the Philadelphia area and at age 80 is planning to downsize, according to Bertoia associate Richard Bertoia.

Drexel director of rowing Paul Savell appreciates the support his men's and women's crews receive - from the student body to the alumni to the athletic administration - and doesn't mind if all that enthusiasm creates some pressure on his Dragons. "We like that pressure," Savell said Friday on the banks of the Schuylkill. "You wouldn't have any diamonds if you didn't have pressure. No, we like that. " The Dragons thrived in Friday's day-long heats at the 74th Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta, advancing eight boats - equally divided between men and women - into the semifinals.

After nearly two years of litigation, the families of the two Hungarian tourists killed in the July 2010 accident between a barge and a duck boat on the Delaware River will receive $15 million from the companies that owned the vessels. "For the families, no amount can replace their priceless only children," their lawyer, Robert Mongeluzzi, said moments after announcing the settlement in the federal case. Szabolcs Prem, 20, and Dora Schwendtner, 16, who were visiting Philadelphia from Hungary, died in the accident.

THE SCHUYLKILL is a sacred place to Jason Read. For as long as he has been rowing, the river has called to him in a special way, not just a place to work out on but an evolving piece of ecology. From the vantage point of his boat, he has seen it change over the years for the better. Only the other the day he happened to see a "turtle the size of watermelon. " New algae are growing. And he sees fish leap from the water that are big, with schools of smaller ones near the banks. Gazing out at the river one chilly morning recently at the Temple boathouse, he said, "The health of the river is improving.