At 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, Capt. John J. Cota, the bar pilot in charge of navigating the container ship Cosco Busan, radioed the Coast Guard vessel traffic service on Yerba Buena Island with an urgent message.

"I touched the delta tower," he told the traffic service, which monitors ship movements in and out of the bay. It may have been the understatement of the year.

Cota was reporting that the 902-foot-long container ship, displacing 65,131 tons, had run into the wooden fender surrounding one of the towers that hold up the Bay Bridge.

The "touch" caused a tear in the side of the ship - a gash 160 feet long and 4 feet deep - rupturing the fuel tanks. Approximately 58,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the bay - the biggest oil spill there in 20 years.

The track can be seen on www.boatingsf.com, a Web site for recreational boaters.