Well it got worse... The 'boat' in San Francisco Bay lost it's owner for a bit or a bite...

James "Hot Rod" Lane's dream of building a boat and sailing to Hawaii is turning into a nightmare.

Instead of being aboard his "Flyin' Hawaiian" catamaran on his journey to a new life in the shadow of Diamond Head, Lane was cooling his heels Tuesday in the Marin County Jail.

The 52-year-old jack of all trades was arrested Monday after he got into a fight with Pat Lopez, harbor master of San Rafael's Loch Lomond Marina, and bit Lopez's right middle finder "almost to the bone," according to San Rafael Police spokeswoman Margo Rohrbacher.

The bloody scrap came during a heated argument over Lane's continuing use of the marina's facilities even though his 65-foot-long, twin-hulled boat left Loch Lomond in June.Since then, the eight-ton beige behemoth, which Lane built in the Loch Lomond parking lot with his 28-year-old son, Michael, has been stuck in the mud off Spinnaker Point southwest of the yacht harbor.

The early afternoon altercation at Loch Lomond erupted after Lane became upset over his key to the marina's showers and docks being deactivated. He was taken into custody and booked on an outstanding arrest warrant from the Sutter County Sheriff's Office for failing to appear on a charge of driving with a suspended license as well as a mechanical violation. He was being held on $11,000 bail.

His legal troubles could soon get worse. Due to the extent of the harbor master's wound, the Marin County District Attorney's Office is reviewing the case and is considering filing a felony charge of battery with a serious injury, Rohrbacher said.

The fight marks a violent turn in a story that has been the talk of the sailing community. A self-described "new mariner," Lane and his homemade boat have been the subject of more than 5,400 posts on the website Sailing Anarchy, most of them ridiculing his "Home Depot" materials, do-it-yourself workmanship and lack of sailing experience.

One post derided his dream as "quixotic." Another called the plywood-hulled Flyin' Hawaiian "a shrine to futility." After Monday's arrest, someone posted, "We need to bail him out. The show must go on."

A post believed to be from Lane threatened to "swamp" anyone floating near his yacht and to "share some reg army with you." The post listed his interests as "shooting."

"I took his threats seriously enough that I decided not to get a close-up view today," a resident who has been keeping an eye on the ill-fated vessel said in an email.

Meanwhile, the Flyin' Hawaiian remains mired in the bay mud, a long way from the sandy beaches of Hawaii, where Lane had hoped to escape his blue collar existence and start a new life as a charter captain and boat builder.

"My boy was working at Walmart and I was doing contract labor," he said in a June 9 story in the Independent Journal. "I've done a lot of things trying to figure out how to make money in America. It was making me crazy trying to figure out a way to get out of the workforce."

The Flyin' Hawaiian first came to the attention of San Rafael police on Aug. 2, after the department's marine unit received a report that it appeared to be stuck in the bay mud and disabled, creating a possible hazard. When officers paid it a call in their patrol boat, they said they were told by someone aboard that they would move the mired catamaran by Aug. 15 after taking care of some "holes that needed to be repaired."

Before he launched the "Flyin' Hawaiian" at Loch Lomond over the past Memorial Day weekend, Lane and his son worked on it in the marina parking lot for most of three years, becoming an object of curiosity in the upscale bayside neighborhood as residents watched the bulky boat inexorably take shape.

Described by one acquaintance as "a character and a half," Lane came to affluent Marin from remote Butte County, where more than 12 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

While some observers were pulling for him, others were betting the boxy boat would sink like a sieve as soon as it came in contact with water. The Flyin' Hawaiian managed to float, but Lane could not afford to keep it berthed at the marina while he continued to work on it.

Now he's a man with a leaky boat, a shattered dream and no permanent address. When he was booked into county jail, he listed his residence as "all points."

"Let me use the crapper, or I'm going to chomp yer"

http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_23856338/flyin-hawaiian-sailboat-builder-jailed-after-fight-loch