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When my Wilson High School classmate, David Dodge, sent me on message about a near drowning in Long Beach Harbor, I was intrigued.

Dodge founded Star Party Cruises in 1986, he since sold the business and he gave up Reggae Party boats for serious work. These days his work is in support of logistics for our Long Beach Oil Islands.

He is the Operation Manager at Sause Bros.-THUMS Division, (THUMS, the original consortium named after the parent companies who bid for the oil island contract: Texaco, Humble (now Exxon), Union Oil, Mobil, and Shell.

Dodge shared the rescue of a swimmer near Oil Island Chaffee that took place a week ago just before 8 in the morning. He wanted to commend the quick thinking of two Sause Bros. employees and the city’s marine patrol/lifeguard staff.

A captain for 37 years, Maurice Scott and deckhand Anthony Lo Grande (who also has a captain’s license) were on board tugboat Redondo preparing to dock when they heard a weak cry from a swimmer near the island who appeared to be drowning.

“We had so much adrenaline in our system that we pulled the swimmer out of the water and on board easily,” Captain Scott said. “The person did not appear to be a distance swimmer and was wearing shorts and a pullover shirt.”

Scott dialed 911 and two Long Beach Rescue boats were there immediately and quickly took the swimmer to the dock at Ballast Point to meet up with additional emergency personnel.

Kudos go to Rescue boat 1’s Jeff Williams and Trevor Wawrzynski as well as Rescue Boat 2’s Captain James Kimbrough and Don Wetteland.

“Sause Brothers is proud to have experienced, well-trained staff who have keen situational awareness, weekly safety drills including Man Overboard drills and CPR/First aid certified IBU union crews. Thanks to the Redondo crew’s quick action today, a life may have been saved,” Dodge wrote in an email.

Due to confidentially, no details regarding the swimmer have been released.

Sause Bros has the contract to transport the people, supplies and equipment that serve the harbor’s oil-producing islands 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their tugs and barges have been specially designed and constructed in their company’s own shipyard.

The American-owned, third generation family business started in the 1930s transporting lumber with one small wooden tug, and has grown to a fleet of more than 60 tugs and barges. The company’s in-house shipyard builds bay, wing and pacific barges and tug boats that are exceedingly fuel efficient.

Fun fact. In 1992 Sause Bros was the firm that moved the Spruce Goose from Long Beach to Oregon’s Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum. The Flying Boat was disassembled and transported by barge up the West Coast, then up the Columbia and Willamette rivers, to Portland, Ore.

It remained there for several months until water levels permitted the massive structures to safely pass under the Willamette’s many bridges. According to the museum’s website, in 1993, the aircraft was transported by truck for the last 7.5 miles to McMinnville, Ore.

Island Chafee is the furthest south of four islands named for astronauts who lost their lives in the service of NASA. Island Freeman is named for the first astronaut to die in active duty. Islands Chaffee, Grissom and White are named after the Apollo 1 astronauts killed in a launch pad accident.

A few years ago, I visited the Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium in the astronaut’s hometown of Grand Rapids. When I told the ushers that we had an island named for Chaffee in my hometown, they nodded at me like I was crazy.

The oil islands, made from 640 tons of boulders from Catalina, are hidden in plain sight thanks to the work of landscape architect Joseph Linesch.  His firm was known for its work on the original Disneyland. The design is not only attractive, it deters the public from swimming to the islands and trespassers are subject to arrest.

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