FRIDAY THE 13th CAN BE DANGEROUS ON BALBOA ISLAND

At 9:00 am on Friday the 13th I received a call from my good friend Tom Stanton who has a computer repair service on Agate Street on Balboa Island. At the end of Agate is the Balboa Island Ferry where 3 cars at a time cross the bay - back and forth - back and forth - from Balboa Island to Balboa Peninsula - usually a short. scenic, peaceful ride.

Things got a little more exciting Friday morning when a Balboa Island resident accidentally hit the accelerator of her car instead of the brake- pushing the van in front of her 30 feet and into Newport Harbor. The van carried a Taiwanese family - mom, dad, daughter 6 and son 4. It wasn't quite the Whale Watching trip they were expecting.

Newport Bay being the place it is - it took only a very few moments before a friendly fisherman, Skip Staats, 46, pulled up to the van and got three of the four occupants into his dingy. The mother climbed over to the driver's seat and was pulled to safety by another local fisherman, James Donoghue, 47. As a testimony to how quickly the rescue occurred, only the mother's shoes were dampened before the van sank in 15 feet of water.

It was actually a lucky day that the incident ended as it did And the Newport Beach police union paid for a new rental car for the family - I love Newport Beach!!!

For more detail please read the LA Times article http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/01/surfer-helps-pull-family-from-van-that-plunged-off-balboa-ferry.html

Photo Credit to Mark Boster/LA Times.