Red Face in Sunset : Skipper Is Rescued After Falling Overboard

Robert Hutchison stretched out in the folding chair on his boat deck Monday, squinted into the afternoon sun and tried to explain why he was still alive.

“I was too embarrassed to die,” joked Hutchison, he and a group of friends dissolving into hearty laughter. “ . . . It was bad enough that I’d fallen over. I wasn’t going to complicate things by dying.”

But he had come close.

Shortly after 7 p.m. Sunday, as his 50-foot sportfishing boat made its way from Santa Catalina Island to King Harbor in Redondo Beach, Hutchison tumbled over the rear of the boat and into the 64-degree waters off Long Point.

Wearing only swimming trunks, the Redondo Beach general contractor swam for 4 1/2 hours, finally reaching a mid-channel buoy. An hour later, about 12:30 a.m., a Coast Guard cutter found him clinging to the buoy.

Hutchison, 37, who suffered mild hypothermia but was not hospitalized, said he found Buoy 7TL by following the sound of its bell.

“I heard ringing in the distance and just kept going in the direction of the buoy,” said Hutchison, captain of the sportfisher Grand Slam. “When I got there, I just hung on.”

If he hadn’t, a Coast Guard spokesman said, he might not have survived.

“He was really fortunate there was a buoy out there,” Lt. Jim Milbury said. “Otherwise, this could have been a real tragedy.”

Indeed, it had all the makings of one, friends said.

“It looked bleak,” said Bob Beauchamp, 41, who had been piloting the vessel that carried him, Hutchison and two others from a weekend fishing excursion Sunday. “About 10 or 20 minutes after he fell over, we saw that he was missing. We spent 4 1/2 hours searching before the Coast Guard told us to go back (in to port). . . . That’s the limit they think a person can survive out there.

“I didn’t think I was ever going to see him again.”

But Hutchison, who fell overboard when the boat dipped suddenly as he emptied a bait tank into the water, said he remained optimistic throughout the ordeal. “I didn’t want to be defeated,” he said. “I wanted to see my family again. I thought of my (three) children the most. I wanted to see them again. I wanted to live.”

Even after the helicopter and two cutters dispatched by the Coast Guard arrived, rescuers had trouble spotting Hutchison in the darkness and two-foot-high swells. Hutchison led the crew to him by whistling.

Had the cutter not discovered him, Hutchison said, he was prepared to continue toward the mainland.

“I thought they had missed me,” he said. “I was just going to keep swimming.”