Speeders Common at Site of Fatal Boat Wreck

The Florida boat collision that killed two Southern California men occurred on a river bend dubbed “Dead Man’s Curve,” where residents have been pressing for new water speed limits, authorities said Sunday.

“We’re awfully sorry it took something like this to bring it to the public’s attention,” said Ora D. Hobbs, who owns the nearby South Moon Fishing Camp.

Kent D. Atwater, 60, of Ventura, and Donald T. Rohrbach, 58, of Burbank, were killed early Friday in a three-boat collision that catapulted six men into the St. Johns River near Daytona Beach, where they were attending a reunion, the Volusia County sheriff’s office said. A third man from South Carolina died, and five were injured in the incident.

Two of the boats were traveling north and a third was heading south when they collided at a blind severe curve in the river, authorities said.

Hobbs’ grandson Reggie McPherson, 32, said he rushed to the collision scene Friday minutes after the accident occurred.

“A gentleman came by and said there was a boat spinning around in the river with no people in it,” he said. “I just got in my own boat to look and see if there was anyone in the water that I could help.”

But McPherson said the three victims had already gone under in the 25-foot-deep river, and the survivors had made their way to the banks. He said the unmanned craft finally careened into the shore.

The men had traveled to Florida for a reunion with 17 friends who played football together at Florida’s Lake Worth High School in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Genie Gable Atwater, the widow of the Ventura man, said her husband, a real estate broker, was an avid water sportsman who had won Senior Olympics gold medals for freestyle and backstroke swimming and a first-place trophy for an over-45 long-board surfing contest. He also had a 1987 trophy from the Surfing Hall of Fame.

Rohrbach’s family could not be reached for comment, but Genie Atwater said the man was an official with a union for film and television technicians.

The boating accident is being investigated by the Florida Game and Fresh Fish Commission, which regulates the river.

“Along that stretch there are points where there are speed limits, but at this particular bend there was none,” said Henry Cabbage, the commission’s public information director. “There has been a grass-roots effort to get a speed limit put on that stretch of river, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Lt. Vinard Hitt of the commission said investigators Sunday were still trying to determine how fast the boats were traveling when they collided.

Regarding Friday’s accident, Hitt said commission staff members “don’t think there were any drug or alcohol problems, but it’s still under investigation.”

Fishing camp owner Hobbs said many pleasure boats travel in excess of 100 m.p.h. near the river bend where the accident occurred, which she said was named “Dead Man’s Curve” after a much-talked-about suicide at that spot.

“That bend has seemed to be an accident-prone place,” she said.

Hobbs said she has been unsuccessful in persuading Florida officials to post the stretch of river as a no-wake zone, which would limit boats to about 5 m.p.h.

Genie Atwater said Sunday that she hopes some water safety reforms occur as a result of the collision. “There has to be some good to come out of the loss of three men,” she said.

She said the family has set up a memorial fund in honor of her husband and Rohrbach at the First National Bank of Ventura, which will support water safety and boating education programs.