The Coast Guard said it was going to suspend search operations at sundown Wednesday for the three people unaccounted after a boat capsized and sank in San Francisco Bay near Alcatraz Island.
U.S. Coast Guard Sector San Francisco told reporters that the decision to suspend the search was not easy, but his teams swept through 950 square nautical miles over 23 hours and haven’t found the missing people or the boat.
“We have completely saturated the search area,” he said. “We always hold out hope,” he later added.
Authorities said they believe 20 people were aboard the Volare, a 50-foot cabin cruiser based out of Stockton, California, when it was hit by a wave Tuesday evening, causing it to capsize.
One man who was aboard was taken to the shore severely injured and, despite CPR being administered, was pronounced dead, officials said. He was identified on Wednesday by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner as 79-year-old Clifford Joseph Boisa of Sutter County. A dog was also killed in the incident, San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen told reporters Wednesday.
Three people were taken to the hospital and later released, according to Crispen.
Crispen told reporters that authorities believe that there was a memorial service that the 20 passengers, all adults and mostly comprised of family members, were taking part in on the vessel when it capsized.
Toczko told reporters that there was a “high possibility that individuals could have been trapped in the vessel.” One survivor said it was a memorial for her sister.
Crews arriving on the scene found a three-deck vessel almost fully underwater with the motor still running and leaking fuel, San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen said.
“Our understanding was there was some kind of memorial service that they were engaging in,” Crispen said at a news conference Tuesday. “They were hit by a wave or took on water, and the boat capsized.”
Three people who were sent to the hospital have been released as of Wednesday morning, officials confirm.
U.S. Coast Guard says it is still conducting searches for the three missing people as a rescue rather than a recovery mission until sundown on Wednesday.
Officials have shared more about the technology rescue crews are using in the search. The teams are using thermal imaging, tide prediction and modeling technologies to help guide them.
As the search continues for the missing people, salvage crews are working to recover the boat, which has been difficult. Search crews are typically trained to be able to pull things from water up to 60 feet deep, which covers most of the Bay Area. However, the boat sank in the shipping channel, which is much deeper at about 120 feet.
By Tuesday evening, authorities had been searching in the open ocean on the western side of the Golden Gate Bridge. The efforts have involved divers, helicopters and vessels.
Pacific Open Water Swim Company. That’s cold but not life-threatening.
All the people rescued Tuesday were taken to the Gashouse Cove Marina in San Francisco.
Officials say they’re still piecing together exactly what caused the boat to skink. It was a three-story, 49-foot private yacht out of Stockton, California.
Crispen said the vessel was believed to have launched near the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. A person who answered the phone there said the club did not have any information on what happened.
The San Francisco Fire Department says that when reports first came in of the boat capsizing, there was steam visible from the boat, which was misinterpreted as smoke. Officials later confirmed that there was no fire on board.
Longtime San Francisco Bay sailor Mike Peterson says incidents like these are rare. “It would take something happening very rapidly to cause a boat like that to go down and people like that to end up in the water,” said Peterson. “You have the wind coming one way and the tide coming another. It makes it very choppy and rough. Especially in the afternoons. That’s exactly what happened here,” said Peterson.
KGO-TV and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Stay with ABC7 News for the latest details on this developing story.
