[RWilson2526]

Speed. One of the witnesses on shore who said that he saw the sailboat’s running lights was a retired law enforcement officer. The same retired officer told Noyes that he saw the speeding Baja shortly before the collision and had commented to friends, “There’s a clown who is either going to kill himself or somebody else.” He estimated the boat was going about 50 mph. Other witnesses who had seen the Baja estimated it was going as fast as 60 mph. Perdock originally told Lt. Charles Slabaugh of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s office, that the speedometer was straight up, in the 12 o’clock position, which would have indicated the boat’s speed was 55 to 60 mph. (Slabaugh was called in to lead the investigation because of Perdock’s position with the Clear Lake Sheriff’s office.) Perdock said months later that Slabaugh’s memory was confused; the speedometer had been in the 9 o’clock position, which would have put the speed at 30 – 35 mph. He later recanted that testimony when he was shown the photographs of the tachometer and speedometer on his boat showing both needles pointing straight up.
Who’s to Blame?
The obvious question is how could someone who is at the helm of a sailboat that’s barely moving be held liable in a collision with a high-speed powerboat?
It didn’t help Bismark Dinius’ case that he had a BAC of .12. In most boating collisions the question of alcohol usually looms large, but in this case it’s almost impossible to imagine how a stone-cold sober Bismark Dinius could have maneuvered the slow-moving sailboat out of harm’s way. As one of the women on the sailboat told a police investigator, “And it was like I saw this boat right there. And I said, ‘we’re going to get hit.’ . . . The next thing I know, POW.”
Perdock insisted he hadn’t seen any lights on the sailboat. Had he been distracted momentarily? (At 40 mph, a boat travels about 60’ feet per second; at 60 mph it would have been traveling 88 feet per second.) A more likely explanation is that the sailboat’s lights were lost among the bright lights on shore, a well-documented phenomenon (Seaworthy, Vol. 10 No. 2). Perdock acknowledged that he had seen unlighted boats on Clear Lake before and had used the lights on shore to search for darkened silhouettes: “I can use the lighting of the object, like Richmond Park, to help me see other boats or objects on the water that may not be lighted. The lights silhouette the object and I can avoid it."
His collision-avoidance tactic may or may not have been effective for spotting unlighted boats but it would almost certainly have the reverse effect - tending to camouflage - any boat that was lighted. A much better tactic for avoiding collisions on a dark night, especially when someone admits to having seen unlighted boats on the lake, is to slow down. No less an authority than the U.S. Coast Guard, Nav Rule 6, cites the presence of background light from buildings on shore as one reason a skipper must reduce speed at night.
When asked why Perdock hadn’t been charged in the accident, the district attorney told Latitude 38 reporter LaDonna Buback, “It’s impossible to prove the speed of a motorboat” and “We can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his speed was the cause of the accident.” One of the expert witnesses, Wes Dodd, disagreed. Dodd is a highly-regarded accident reconstructionist and former law enforcement officer who has investigated over 650 boating accidents. His conclusion: “. . . speed was the primary factor in this collision. In order to ramp the sailboat and cause the amount of damage done, Mr. Perdock would have had to have been going 40+ miles per hour based on my previous experience of vessel accident investigation and witnessing staged vessel accidents.”
There is no speed limit on Clear Lake. There are, however, federal laws that apply. Dodd noted that Perdock had been in violation of Rule 5 (Lookout), Rule 6 (Safe Speed), Rule 7 (Risk of Collision) Rule 8 (Action to Avoid Collision), Rule 13 (Overtaking), and Rule 25 (Sailing Vessels Underway and Vessels Under Oars). Dodd concluded simply, “Had Mr. Perdock been operating his vessel at a safe prudent speed, this accident could have been avoided.”
Bismark Dinius
In their extensive coverage of the case, Latitude 38 editors and television reporter Dan Noyes, have noted that the only thing Bismark Dinius is guilty of is having his hand on the tiller when the sailboat was hit from behind. Even the running lights, if they were off, would be the responsibility of the boat’s skipper. At the preliminary hearing, however, the judge supported the district attorney’s assertion that enough evidence existed for Dinius to stand trial in September for involuntary manslaughter.

Aside from causing overwhelming mental anguish, the upcoming trial will be hugely expensive. In the earlier civil case against Dinius and Weber, legal and investigative expenses for Dinius alone have been $160,000, all of which were paid by Weber's marine insurance carrier and Mr. Dinius' homeowner's insurance carrier. In the criminal trial, Dinius must pay all of his legal fees and costs, including his experts' trial testimony, out of his own pocket.