A group of close friends and family that gathered to spread the ashes of a loved one in the San Francisco Bay on Tuesday became the subject of a massive search-and-rescue mission after their boat sank, killing at least one person and leaving three missing.
Clifford Joseph Boisa, 79, of Sutter County, Calif., outside Sacramento, was brought to shore on Tuesday and died of injuries sustained as the boat sank.
The boat, a 49-foot cabin cruiser called the Volare, sank to the bottom of the bay near Alcatraz Island after it was hit by a wave and lost stability, Captain Jarod Toczko of the U.S. Coast Guard said during a news conference on Wednesday.
The two lower levels of the three-tiered boat were already submerged by the time rescue workers arrived on Tuesday afternoon. James Smith, 52, who was captaining a fishing boat nearby, saw passengers huddled atop the vessel as it sunk deeper. Others hung from the hull. Many were in the water.
“In my career, I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mr. Smith, who has operated charter boats for 40 years.
Here’s what we know.
The group was on the bay for a memorial.
There were 20 people onboard the Volare, and 16 were rescued on Tuesday. Another three remain unaccounted for.
The San Francisco Police Department said it had recovered a body from the bay on Thursday and pronounced the person dead at the scene. The authorities have not released an identity or said whether the person was on the boat on Tuesday.
The group on the Volare were all close friends and relatives, gathered to spread the ashes of a member of the Boisa family in the bay’s waters.
Ralph Boisa, 77, a family member who was not on the boat, said that people were trapped inside the boat’s cabin, on the middle level, when it sank. Those people included Clifford Boisa’s wife, Jackie Boisa, 77, and Clifford’s sister, Carol Boisa, 74, he said. The authorities have not identified them as among the missing passengers.
The entire group of survivors was brought ashore on Tuesday. They were drenched in water, some were bruised and many were missing their shoes, said Christine Kaplan, who runs a boating fuel center that hosted rescue workers’ emergency operations.
The authorities did not identify the boat’s captain, but said he had been brought to a hospital and has since been released. According to registration documents, John Edward Boisa of Stockton, Calif., owns the Volare with his wife. Mr. Boisa is a younger brother of Clifford Boisa, the man who died.
The boat was hit by a wave.
The Volare held a permit to dock at the Marina Yacht Harbor in San Francisco from Saturday through Thursday, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department said. The boat departed from the harbor on Tuesday and went under near Alcatraz Island, best known for its shuttered federal prison.
Officials are still investigating what caused the boat to sink, the Coast Guard said on Wednesday. Mr. Toczko said it began to take on water after it was slammed by a wave and rolled onto its side.
As the boat tilted, several people fell overboard, and others probably became disoriented, Mr. Toczko said.
Mike Montoya, 38, a commercial fisherman who arrived at the scene before rescue crews, said that within five or six minutes, the red top of the vessel was all that remained above water.
Several boats nearby helped rescue passengers.
Boats from multiple fire departments, the Coast Guard and other agencies responded to the scene. But before that, several onlookers helped rescue people.
Passengers stranded in the water clung to a windsurfer’s board. Fishing boats pulled others from the waves. “You saved lives,” Mr. Toczko said on Wednesday, thanking those who helped respond to the disaster.
The Coast Guard and 16 partner agencies suspended their search for passengers at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday after more than 54 combined hours. Rescue crews, including scuba divers and helicopters, covered more than 950 miles, the Coast Guard said.
The boat sank in “one of the deepest parts of the bay,” and is sitting more than 120 feet underwater, said Mariano Elias, a lieutenant with the San Francisco Fire Department.
The weather wasn’t abnormal.
Winds were light across San Francisco Bay on Tuesday morning but picked up in the afternoon, as is typical in the summer.
The narrow waterway between Alcatraz and the northern shore of San Francisco can become a choke point where currents pick up and produce larger waves.
At the time the boat capsized, “it was definitely a little breezier than what it normally would be, but not by a ton,” said Brian Garcia, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.