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Searching for answers in sea death

It will take about a month to figure out why a yacht and a fishing boat collided Jan. 24, killing a woman.

By ROBIN STEIN
Published February 5, 2006

They heard the boat before they saw it.

With each second the sound grew louder, and then a 54-foot Sea Ray yacht emerged from the haze on the horizon.

"When it came out of the fog it was coming right at us," said James Maune, one of six people aboard the Lazy Bones, a 31-foot fishing charter.

Everyone shouted and frantically waved their arms. Maune yelled for his wife and friends to get away from the back of the boat.

Then the first mate jumped overboard, seconds before it hit.

Maune had been the one to suggest they charter the Lazy Bones.

He and his wife, Audrey, were in town from Plainview, N.Y., to visit their old friends, Vincent and Theresa Mazzola, who were renting a condo in Clearwater for the winter.

Maune, 63, found the Tarpon Springs-based boat on the Internet. He arranged to meet Capt. Andy Hoffman at the docks in Tarpon Springs early Tuesday, Jan. 24. And he invited the Mazzolas to come along.

The weather was not ideal, but the fish were biting.

The boat anchored about 10 miles west of Anclote Key. The sea was calm, no land in sight. There were bands of fog, where visibility was just 100 yards.

For about an hour, Hoffman and his first mate, 23-year-old Dustin Saaf, cut bait and pulled lines, while the foursome fished.

Theresa Mazzola, 67, caught a nice-sized bass.

"It wasn't a Guiness book of records," he said. "But she was very excited because it was the first time she ever caught a fish."

In Dunedin, Ronald M. Lacey, 45, and his friend Michael Mitchell, 43, had a similar idea. They were heading out for some deep-sea fishing on Lacey's yacht, the Almost There.

By the time Lacey saw the Lazy Bones, it was too late.

His boat ripped through the starboard side of the stern, taking off a corner of the boat from the railing to below the water line, Maune said.

The impact sent the 73-year-old Hoffman into the water. And then the yacht disappeared into the fog.

Hoffman and Saaf climbed back onto the boat through the gaping hole. They tried calling for help, but the radio was dead.

Maune said he and his wife pulled out life jackets and helped the Mazzolas get theirs on.

Theresa Mazzola was in pain, Maune said, so when the yacht reappeared with its swim platform down, she was the first person Lacey helped aboard his yacht.

Her husband followed, then Saaf.

That's when someone shouted, "Get off! It's going down!" Maune said.

"The boat went down under me and I found myself floating," he said.

It sank so quickly that his wife was pulled underwater and trapped by her life preserver under the boat's canvas awning.

"I called for help," he said.

And the captain of the yacht responded.

"Lacey dove into the water and pulled her out from under the canvas," Maune said.

Everyone made it aboard the Almost There. They waited, still stunned, soaking wet, and worried about Theresa Mazzola.

"We felt that she was seriously injured," Maune said. "We didn't realize that it was as life threatening as it was."

She was in stable condition when the Coast Guard arrived almost an hour later. Rescuers decided to take her to the Clearwater Coast Guard Station themselves, about 50 minutes away by boat, rather than calling for a helicopter transport. Her husband rode with her.

About 40 minutes into the trip, she began to have trouble breathing.

At the station, a helicopter was waiting to take her to Bayfront Medical Center.

Theresa Mazzola did not make it through the night.

There are still many unanswered questions surrounding the fatal midmorning collision.

After all, what are the chances?

"It's slim," said Edward J. Prouty, an investigator with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "This ocean's so vast."

Prouty said the investigation should take about a month. All the passengers have been interviewed, but followups are likely.

Investigators will gather data from the yacht's computer and await the results of Mazzola's autopsy.

Investigators are trying to determine whether Lacey violated navigation rules, such as traveling at unsafe speeds, or failure to have a proper lookout or use a sound-producing device in a fog. All are misdemeanors, Prouty said, punishable by up to a year imprisonment.

"Whether he was looking out to the horizon or looking down - that's the biggest factor," Prouty said.

Maune's written report to the Coast Guard states that Lacey said "he was going 27 knots on autopilot and had looked away momentarily prior to the collision."

But Lacey told investigators that the autopilot was off and he was traveling about 20 knots, Prouty said.

Lacey, who owns the Bay Area Site Improvement Co., lives in Crystal Beach and is married to Lynne Austin, the original Hooters billboard model. Efforts to reach him have been unsuccessful, though Prouty said he's been very cooperative with authorities.

Hoffman declined to comment, but Maune said he was "very, very upset. As captain of the boat, he feels responsible."

Theresa Mazzola was buried Wednesday.

Maune said he has known the Mazzolas since 1964. "We lived on the same street, on the same block. They are my daughter's godparents."

"You can imagine how I feel, because it was my idea to go fishing."

"I am to some extent angry - yes," Maune said. "But on the other hand, Lacey saved my wife."

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Robin Stein can be reached at rstein@sptimes.com or 727 445-4157.

[Last modified February 5, 2006, 01:38:46]