OCEANSIDE: Father mourns son lost at sea

By DAN SIMMONS - Staff Writer | Tuesday, May 13, 2008 6:10 PM PDT ∞

OCEANSIDE ---- Every night, Paul Hartman would drive straight from work to the docks.

"How'd ya do," would be his first words to his 27-year-old son, Josh Hartman. Josh Hartman had quit work as a mechanic and started commercial fishing full time two years ago.

"He basically fulfilled my dream in life," Paul Hartman, 56, said Tuesday.

Last Thursday night, Paul Hartman was at the docks as always, waiting for his son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Ana Martin, to return from another day on the sea. Father and son had talked by phone at 3:45 p.m. That's when Paul Hartman learned they'd caught a run of bonito.

"It can be just a frenzy," Hartman said. "It may only last an hour or two, but when it happens, you have to make the most of it."

But the joyful reunion of father, son and buckets of fish never came that night. And it looks like it never will.

Last Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard called off a search at sea for Josh Hartman and Martin. They never made it back to shore last Thursday night. A massive search overnight Thursday into Saturday yielded no new clues.

Their unmanned boat was found washed ashore on a stretch of beach in front of some houses in Rosarito, Mexico, sometime between 10 and 11 a.m. Friday, Lt. Jeremy Denning said.

Mexican navy officials told the Coast Guard that the boat was in good condition, with no obvious damage. The fish were found ---- three to four garbage pails full, with others flapping on the boat's deck. Everything else Hartman and Martin had with them that day ---- their Global Positioning System, their radio, their two handguns, their wallets ---- were on the boat, just as they left it.

But there was one important exception: gas. The tank was empty.

"The only thing that makes any sense to me," Paul Hartman said as he sat in the cabin of a boat on a sun-drenched day, "is that one or the other possibly slipped and fell in the water and the other one without thinking jumped in to try to help."

The boat was in gear, on autopilot, the Mexican Navy said. That means if the accident happened, and the two were in the water, the boat would have drifted away in an exactly straight line at 3 mph, faster than anyone could swim to catch it, Hartman said.

He knew they had about 60 gallons of fuel, just enough, he said, to get to Rosarito. He figures the boat drifted in with the tides once the gas tank went dry.

Not that it's his only theory of what happened.

"There's probably been every scenario you can think of that's entered my mind," he said.

Paul Hartman searched with his other son, also named Paul, and friends overnight Thursday and most of Friday before fatigue finally stopped him.

"I started to see things that weren't even there," he said.

The passage of time has brought no comfort.

"He wasn't just my son," he said. "He was my fishing buddy."

These words bring tears to his light blue eyes and he takes off his black sunglasses to wipe them dry. His worn blue baseball cap bears the name of his son's boat, The Pelican.

Whenever they could, they fished together, father and his two sons. Paul Hartman's wife of 35 years, Marsha, used to join them on occasion. More recently, Josh Hartman's fiancee would accompany them.

When they weren't fishing, they were thinking about fishing, Paul Hartman said.

"Some people don't realize this is maybe a disease," he said. "If you go to work or you're in the grocery store or you're mowing your backyard, it doesn't matter. You're thinking about the harbor and about the boat."

Solace comes, he said, from knowing his son came to rest doing the thing he loved most with the woman he loved. They were to be married in August.

"He had girlfriends before, but they weren't like Ana," Hartman said, choking up. "She was probably one of the finest, sweetest ladies I had ever met in my life."

On Tuesday, Hartman took the day off work. And despite all that happened, or maybe because of it, he went to the docks.

"I just had to," he explained. "I'm always down here. It truly is home."

The other anglers and boaters that share the harbor offered condolences.

"I can't tell you how many of them came over and cried with me," he said.

Contact staff writer Dan Simmons at (760) 740-5426 or dsimmons@nctimes.com.

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