On the very day the U.S. Coast Guard was searching for John F. Kennedy Jr.’s missing plane, Malibu’s real Baywatch — the nickname for the L.A. County Lifeguards (as well as their rescue boat) — may have taken nearly twice as long to rescue three victims of a freak sailing accident virtually in sight off their Zuma Beach headquarters.

That the boat’s passengers lived to tell the tale was, according to them, due more to luck and preparation than any action on the part of the lifeguards who, they say, initially greeted the alarm with nonchalance, or the sheriff’s office, which seemed inexplicably indifferent.

It was near-perfect sailing weather when, at 3:30 that Saturday afternoon, architect and Malibu resident David von Oeyen (a lifelong sailor), his son Geoffrey (a mainstay of the Stanford University sailing team) and Geoff’s girlfriend, Jyoti Bollman, launched the family’s 20-foot Tornado catamaran as they had for eight years, from a friend’s private beach near Victoria Point. As with his 15 earlier sails in July, not only did everyone wear wet suits and life jackets, David’s wife, Nancy, and his younger son, Andrew, remained on the beach as part of a “buddy system,” aware of where the trio were sailing and when they should be back.

“The wind was steady at 15-20 knots,” von Oeyen, vice commodore of the grandly named (but fairly modest with only 24 members) Malibu Yacht Club, recalls. “We were running fast, about 16 to 18 knots on the port tack about two miles offshore, when I felt a bump, and the entire front end of the starboard hull broke off. My first reaction was that we had hit a whale or a shark.” The catamaran immediately began to turn over as the hull filled with water; eventually all that remained above water was the port hull. On it, Geoff and Jyoti were perched; David, who, more than the danger of sharks, feared his added weight would sink their remaining hull, treaded water. “I looked at my watch,” he recalls. “It was 3:50.”

“I was reading,” Nancy recalls, “and looked out to see their sail every few minutes. Then it wasn’t there any more.” She waited five minutes and then ran to a neighbor’s house to sound the alarm. She knew something was wrong but was determined not to let her terror show. “This was my family,” Nancy recalls thinking. “What do I have to do? I figured if I acted calmly, they would take me seriously.”

Unfortunately, it seems that wasn’t the case, at least in the beginning. “I called Baywatch,” she says, “and they said to relax, that they’d probably turn up after a while, and may have rounded Point Dume and couldn’t be seen. I knew that was crazy because there is no way they could have gone that far from the time I last saw them until they disappeared.”

Five minutes after Nancy’s 4:05 call to the lifeguards (the time confirmed by the neighbor who dialed the number for her), she called the Lost Hills Sheriff’s station at the suggestion of the guard on Broad Beach. “I asked them to radio their helicopter which you always see flying up and down the coast and ask if the pilot would look for the boat out of his window. The woman who took the call identified herself as a deputy and said it wasn’t their domain and that I should call the lifeguards back and ask them to call the Coast Guard. I guess their domain is patrolling the beaches for dogs off their leashes, people drinking and nude sunbathers,” Nancy says. “Apparently looking for people in the water which, in this case could have been easily done, was less urgent.”

Sheriff’s Lieutenant Jim Glazar says there is no problem looking out the window and that they “do it all the time.” When asked to confirm the alarm, however, he said that the machine that taped all incoming calls had “eaten” everything between July 12 and 25 and thus there was no record. Later, Glazar said he had questioned the female deputy on duty that afternoon who remembered only a call about a jet ski and none about a missing catamaran. “Someone may have walked by, heard the phone ringing and answered it,” Glazar said. “If there was a mistake, we are very sorry. We are the public safety answering point. My people know how to handle that kind of call, but I can’t prove it.” Glazar subsequently advised that he had contacted the helicopter pilot and “absolutely confirmed” that neither he nor his assistant were flying their green-and-gold “bird” at any time July 17. “Perhaps they saw the Navy helicopter, which is dark green,” Glazar said.

Frustrated and frantic, Nancy drove first to Point Dume to see if she could see the boat, and then to the Zuma Beach Baywatch headquarters. According to Nancy, one of the six or seven lifeguards eating fruit and cookies when she arrived said, “We think we’ve found them.” “We talked about the search for JFK Jr. and that now it was happening to me,” she said. It was now past 5 p.m., an hour after Nancy had first alerted Baywatch. According to Nancy, it would be sometime longer before the lifeguards radioed that they had found people in the water and that the boat was “a total.” There were, incidentally, 90,000 people on the Malibu beaches that afternoon, of which an estimated 75,000 were on Zuma, according to lifeguard Captain Tom Viren. “We made nine rescues [of swimmers],” he said, “a busy day but not an extremely busy day.”

Although lifeguard Captain Nick Steers at Baywatch headquarters originally claimed there was no record of a call at 4:05 p.m. and that the alarm didn’t go out until Nancy arrived at Zuma at 5 p.m., Viren later said indeed a call was received “between 4 and 4:40” but the lifeguard who took the call (and claims that it was Mrs. von Oeyen who suggested the boat may have rounded Point Dume) failed to record it. “We started calling the guard stations from Surfrider Beach to Leo Carrillo, and asked if they could see a boat to try to pin down the location and start a search,” said Viren, “but all reported negative. When she arrived at 5 p.m., we told her we had located the boat with binoculars straight out from our headquarters and picked them up within 5 minutes.”

Not according to David: “It was 5:35 when they picked us up, and we only saw the Baywatch boat five minutes before that. They told us they didn’t see us until they were nearly upon us. Everyone sat on this for an hour or more, apparently because they didn’t believe Nancy.” In fact, Nancy believes no one took the alarm seriously until Andrew, who, around 4:40, seeing through binoculars that the Baywatch boat was still at Zuma Beach, called and demanded that they “do something!”

After piling the trio into the Baywatch boat — all shivering from their long exposure in 64- 65-degree water — the lifeguards attached a line to the crippled catamaran and towed it in, not to Broad Beach where the guards feared the wreck would endanger swimmers (there are very few) but to Paradise Cove. There they anchored it offshore where, the next day, David and his sons dismantled it underwater and hauled the remains onto another friend’s beach.

“It usually takes a tragedy for things like social ills or rescue services to be improved,” David said. “Well, thank God there was no tragedy here, but there could have been. A serious warning was treated with either nonchalance or indifference. Although we are thankful for the professionalism showed by the lifeguards when they finally picked us up, there is no question in my mind that if the various rescue services available — the lifeguards, the sheriff’s station, and perhaps the Coast Guard — were coordinated, we would have been rescued much faster. I think the emergency rescue system fell apart. I hope everyone takes this episode as a wake-up call.”

At first there were three quaint, if somewhat stoical, sheep gracing the barren field in the Civic Center.

The ram and two ewes, fashioned by French artist Francois Lalanne of bronze and cement, were installed in June as part of the Summer Sculpture Exhibition curated by Carl Schlosberg.

The trio hardly had time to get accustomed to their bleak surroundings — well, it isn’t a verdant meadow — when the ram was whisked off under cover of darkness June 18.

Schlosberg said he was devastated by the loss and hoped it was just a prank and the ram would be recovered. “I’ve never had anything stolen before,” he said, adding that no art collector would ever do such a thing. Sheriff’s deputies investigated the theft but found no clues and still have not made an arrest.

After the ram rip-off, Schlosberg enlisted the aid of artist Ed Benavente to fit the remaining sheep with cement shoes. So it seemed unlikely the two ewes could be stolen, but people did wonder when the pair went missing last week.

Schlosberg’s wife, Judy, assured The Malibu Times Monday the pair had not fallen to thieves.

“Carl sold them both to the same person,” she said. “He removed them last week.”

Schlosberg, who has obtained several pieces of public art for Malibu, said he was hoping at least one or two from this exhibition would be sold here. Sadly, Judy said, that will not be the case with the sheep, which were purchased by someone from outside the area. “I’m afraid they are not to stay in Malibu,” she said.

But there still might be a chance for Malibu to keep a sheep, if somehow the purloined ram was found, or if the perps had a change of heart and returned him one dark night.

Locals might not be thrilled about this summer’s bumper-to-bumper traffic on PCH, but local business owners couldn’t be happier. When it comes to the Malibu tourist trade, sunny means money. From Moonshadows to Taverna Tony, cash registers are ringing and the crowds are back.

“There’s no comparison,” said burgermeister Steve Wiley of Country Kitchen. “It’s probably double from what it was last year.

Ah, yes — the surf is up, the sun is shining and Caltrans trucks are few and far between. It’s a far cry from the gray El Nino skies and slide repair of last year. “I’m fatally a sunshine-only business,” explained Wiley, whose snack shop specializes in the chili dogs and BLTs that beach days were made for. “Last year, I just got the tradespeople and folks who came in for work. All the through traffic was gone.”

It’s the same story across the street at Duke’s, where diners wait in line for a table at the Barefoot Bar. “Last year, we had no left-turn lane because of the slide,” said manager Jeff Mayhew. “That just killed us.” Like Wiley, Mayhew describes the difference between this year and last year as “phenomenal.”

The slide repair had an especially devastating impact not only on Duke’s but also at another eatery that was just starting out — Tutto Bene. Now both restaurants seem to have recovered and their tables are full.

“This is the best year we have ever had in this location,” said Vassil Pertchinkov of Guido’s. “It’s been really great.”

Like the restaurants, local retailers also have a lot less to complain about this year. At Indiana Joan’s, shoppers spent their weekend snapping up Chinese silk robes and summer shifts. Stores like Malibu Bay Company and Atlantis have had a steady stream of customers even during the week. There have been a few overcast days, but the crowds of people eager to escape the searing heat in L.A. keep on coming.

Most local merchants seem to agree that business is way up. How much their sales increase remains to be seen. The real tally will be made Sept. 7, when they begin counting up their receipts from the annual summer finale on Labor Day.

Until then, Wiley can’t flip his beach burgers fast enough.

While the East Coast is suffering the worst drought in recorded history, Malibu argues about where to put water it doesn’t need or want.

This is not virgin rainwater, however. It is preowned — water that has been used, treated (some say insufficiently) stored, sold and, in some cases, is not needed.

But disposing of unwanted water in a beachside community with high groundwater levels is a thorny issue. Underground aquifers are not an option.

Most of the wastewater from Pepperdine University and Malibu Country Estates is treated at the Malibu Mesa Wastewater Treatment Facility, at John Tyler Drive and PCH, which is operated by Los Angeles County Public Works under a permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Essentially, Pepperdine recycles its wastewater by irrigating its landscape, useful in summer and drought years, problematic in the average winter.

Since October 1981, the plant has had an emergency discharge permit for 200,000 gallons per day, the plant’s capacity, into Marie Canyon, says Brian Hooper, assistant division engineer with county Public Works. Marie Canyon empties onto the beach at Malibu Road and into Santa Monica Bay.

“We are applying for renewal of that discharge permit,” Hooper said. “We are not asking for an increase in volume.”

According to Winnie Jesena, chief of RWQCB’s Los Angeles Coastal Watershed Unit, “They are applying for renewal of that permit to discharge during the rainy season when their storage tanks are full.”

The Malibu Mesa plant treats raw sewage with biological disinfection to get it to reclaimed water quality, which it sends back to Pepperdine, Hooper said. Pepperdine also sends some of its raw sewage to the Tapia Reclamation Facility in Malibu Canyon for treatment and buys back reclaimed water for irrigation.

Pepperdine’s irrigation demand is listed at a maximum of 300,000 gallons a day. It can hold 12.4 million gallons in its two reservoirs on campus, which store treated water from the Malibu Mesa plant and some that is purchased from Tapia.

City Councilman Harry Barovsky said he has records showing Pepperdine receives about eight times more reclaimed water from Tapia than it sends for treatment. Records for 28 months in 1990 to 1992 show an average of 10,875 gallons of sewage received at Tapia and 87,107 gallons reclaimed water delivered to Pepperdine. “I have updated records that I’ve given to the city,” he said. “If they only took back what they shipped that would be a beginning of a solution.”

The inference is that Tapia is dumping its excess reclaimed water through Pepperdine into Marie Canyon.

“There is absolutely no connection between Malibu Mesa and Tapia,” Hooper said. “We receive no discharge from Tapia and we don’t send anything to Tapia.”

Digested sludge from Malibu Mesa is hauled to a Los Angeles collection facility and ultimately winds up at the Hyperion plant, Hooper said.

Sludge from Tapia goes to the Las Virgenes Water District’s composting facility in Malibu Canyon.

Barovsky, who lives on Malibu Road, said residents there are opposed to the dumping of more water onto the beach. “My concern is they want to send 200,000 gallons a day, that they could store and use for irrigation, down a geologically unstable canyon.”

Save Our Coast’s Mary Frampton, who opposes all discharges into the ocean on environmental grounds, agrees with Barovsky and has written letters to the RWQCB urging denial of the Malibu Mesa request.

The dichotomy is that Malibu Road residents have traditionally opposed irrigation of the hillsides above their properties — Pepperdine’s huge grass area, Country Estates lawns and Bluffs Park ball fields — as contributing to slope failures along Malibu Road. “We feel that irrigation has a tremendous effect on the geology of the bluffs,” Barovsky said. “We would like to see Pepperdine put in xeriscape, [native plants that require little irrigation].”

Tapia’s RWQCB permit for treating and selling wastewater allows discharge of unsold water into Malibu Creek except during the dry season, from May to October, when the Malibu Lagoon sand berm is closed. Tapia has just received permits to discharge unsold water into the Los Angeles River. That, Barovsky said, “is a good beginning.” Frampton agrees. “Malibu shouldn’t be a dumping ground for developments in the whole watershed.”

Malibu Mesa’s request, scheduled for consideration and public hearing by the RWQCB June 30, has been postponed to a future board meeting. Malibu residents may submit written opinions to the Regional Water Quality Control Board, Attention Carlos Urrunaga, 320 W. 4th St., Suite 200, Los Angeles, CA 90013.