From the online Miami Herald:

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Posted at 7:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, December 27, 2000

MARSHA HALPER/HERALD STAFF

Inspectors OKd lost vessel

Coast Guard will investigate freighter's disappearance and
apparent sinking

BY CURTIS MORGAN, ANDREA ELLIOTT AND GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES
cmorgan@herald.com

The Coast Guard inspected the missing island freighter Anita as recently as September and found some minor problems in the aging ship -- excess oil in the bilge and a leaky fuel line in the engine room.

But there was nothing that hinted at potential catastrophe, no severe structural or equipment problem that would have sent a 163-foot ship to the bottom so fast that none of the 10 people aboard would have time to radio an S.O.S.

``Everything went well on the inspection, according to our records here,'' Lt. Cmdr. Larry Bowling, who commands the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Office in Miami, said Tuesday.

With containers of cooking oil and plastic pellets, the bulk of the ship's cargo, washing ashore from Pompano Beach to West Palm Beach, the Coast Guard assumes the ship went down duringthe Christmas weekend -- but why it did so remains a mystery. Anything from rogue waves to shifting cargo could have crippled the vessel, bound for Haiti but battling wicked waves and wind in the Florida Straits.

Because the Anita is registered in Belize and was operating in international waters, the Coast Guard is not obligated to investigate the cause, Bowling said, but will anyway.

``Because of the tragedy this whole situation represents, we want answers ourselves,'' said Bowling. ``If there is something we can do to prevent this type of tragedy from happening, we'd want to know.''

The agencies that ran the ship desperately want to know what happened as well. They're trying to contact families in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Honduras and New Orleans, where the skipper, José Carvallo, lived. Although the official crew list contained nine names, the Coast Guard said it believed 10 people were aboard.

``We don't even know what to tell the families of these people because we do not know whether they are alive or dead,'' said Jerry Saliba, president of Titan Foods, which operated the ship. ``We have some hope. . . . We truly cannot accept the fact that something occurs like that without any radio distress signal. . . . I mean, a boat doesn't sink in a fraction of seconds.''

That hope was dim, however. The ship, which sailed from the Miami River Saturday morning, was due in the Haitian port of Gonaives today but did not arrive. Instead, much of its cargo drifted ashore in South Florida.

The Coast Guard hired a local clean-up company to begin collecting the flotsam, numbering at least 300 55-pound bags of Petrothene pellets, a nonhazardous compound used in plastics, 150 35-gallon plastic drums thought to contain vegetable oil, 5,000 to 10,000 one-gallon containers of vegetable oil and 15 55-gallon drums of unknown material.

The Anita's last known position came from an emergency radio beacon triggered about 10 p.m. Saturday some 45 miles southeast of Miami. The device can be tripped manually but also goes off automatically when submerged. There was no other distress call from the ship, which was equipped with a number of radios and communication devices, including cell phones -- all with battery back-ups.

Bowling said it will be difficult to make any sort of definite finding. The water in the area is more than 1,000 feet deep, so the vessel might never be found.

There are some factors that might have played a role.

``Obviously, the vessel was laden with cargo, the seas were big, the winds strong. It wasn't the best of sea conditions,'' Bowling said. ``The cargo may have shifted inadvertently and the vessel might have capsized. A steel plate might have sprung.''

Though the Anita was built in 1959, the last inspection showed the vessel seaworthy, said Bowling. Under an international agreement enacted after a series of fatal freighter sinkings in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Coast Guard inspects vessels smaller than 500 gross tons at least once a year, he said.

Vessels have to meet minimum standards for life-saving, fire-fighting and structural integrity. The Anita, records show, was in ``substantial compliance'' and fit to carry trade out of Miami. Some 23 other vessels aren't, he said, and are on ``port hold'' until they're brought up to standards.

The Anita, once named the Ann Victoria, was detained for a few weeks for paperwork problems in September but they were cleared up.

Given weather conditions, any crew in the water would be unlikely to survive more than 36 hours, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Robert Suddarth. ``Fifteen-foot waves and 30 mile-an-hour winds -- I wouldn't want to be out there.''

Though he admitted it sounded ``insane,'' Saliba said the company was still trying to reach the Anita by radio, hoping the ship was out there somewhere, somehow.

Carvallo was an experienced professional, not the sort of captain to recklessly expose his crew to danger, Saliba said. ``I would rate José and his group among the best on the Miami River,'' he said.

Another skipper apparently contacted the ship two hours after it sailed, Saliba said, and Carvallo reported no problems.

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