Ronald Curtis Woodard, 67, and Ronald Kai Woodard Jr., 31, were about an hour into a leisurely cruise after leaving the Waikiki Yacht Club when the 62 foot Keaoleleana caught fire.
The elder Woodard told Khon2 the fire began below deck. A fire extinguisher deployed by his son was not powerful enough to beat back the flames.
“Just boom, really quick,” said Woodard. “Within about two minutes we were totally engulfed.”
The father and son, both from Waikoloa on the Big Island, jumped into a life raft to escape the thick black smoke and intense heat from the flames.
The captain of the dive charter boat Snoopy V was about a half mile away from the flaming vessel when Captain Randell Albertson noticed the smoke.
“Saw that the sailboat had flames coming from it,” said Albertson. “Turned around, went to it (and) found two of the passengers in the water.”
“I don’t think I was in the water more than four or five minutes,” said the elder Woodard. “It was very short.”
The fireboat Moku Ahi and a U.S. Coast Guard vessel both responded to the fire but could not save the vessel. The ketch-style sailboat sank at about 3 p.m. without fire investigators getting a close look or being able to climb aboard.
Honolulu Fire Department spokesman Capt. Terry Seelig said the first call for the fire came at 1:37 p.m. About an hour later the fire was extinguished and both men had been delivered to the Kewalo Small Boat Harbor courtesy the Snoopy V. They suffered only minor scrapes and bruises.
“They had it under control,” said Albertson, the captain of the Snoopy V. “They had a life raft out and both of them had life jackets on, so they did good.”
The elder Woodard, the owner of the boat for the past ten years, estimated the Keaoleleana’s value at $1.8 million. The sailboat was custom made and featured a teak-paneled Jacuzzi. He said insurance on the vessel covers a maximum of $500,000.
“They do have my lifeboat,” Woodard said with a chuckle, still showing a sense of humor despite his huge loss. “We’re fine,” he added. “That’s the main thing.”
Woodard doesn’t know how the fire began but said the sailboat’s diesel engine was in neutral at the time, and he had recently replaced batteries on the vessel.
“It could’ve been a battery problem,” he speculated. “Could’ve been a short.”
The U.S. Coast Guard could not say whether the hull of the sailboat would be raised off the ocean floor, but such an effort would likely be too expensive to be worth the effort.
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See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
