Coast Guard suspends search for 4 missing off Sonoma County coast

The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended — “pending the development of further information” — Sunday’s massive search effort for four boaters who went missing after their vessel capsized off the Sonoma County coast over the weekend.

During the search, which began Saturday night and continued all day Sunday, one person was found alive and a body was recovered, but three adults and a child remain missing.

U.S. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Levi Read said the search effort was suspended at 6:30 p.m. pending further information. Next of kin have been notified, he said.

The search had not resumed Monday morning.

The search, which began late Saturday, involved helicopters, planes, rescue boats and various state and local agencies, along with the California Air National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard.

“The decision to suspend a search is always difficult to make and never done lightly,” said U.S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue Coordinator Chief Michael L. Zapawa in a news release. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the missing boaters during this incredibly difficult time."

Saturday marked the first day of the noncommercial Dungeness crab season.

There were six people in total aboard a 21-foot Bayliner that took off to go crabbing at about 3 p.m. Saturday from the Westside Regional Park’s boat launch in Bodega Bay, officials said, adding that the group was expected to return by 7 p.m.

Five of the boaters are family members from Corning in Tehama County and the sixth is a friend of the family, according to Read. It was not immediately clear whether the friend was a child or an adult.

The search began at about 10 p.m. Saturday after someone called the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office saying they had not heard from the group, according to Deputy Rob Dillion, a sheriff’s spokesman.

The Coast Guard was contacted about 11:40 p.m. Saturday, officials said.

The search was stopped overnight and resumed at about 4 a.m. Sunday, Dillion said, adding that emergency personnel found floating debris and life vests in various spots along the coast.

Officials said everyone on the vessel wore a life vest. Six life vests were found during the search, Read said.

Coastal deputies pinged the cellphone of one of the people on board the vessel and it came back near Carmet Beach in Bodega Bay.

Crews spanned the coastlines of Sonoma and Marin counties Sunday, stretching from the mouth of Tomales Bay to at least Carmet Beach, just south of Jenner, and the mouth of the Russian River, if not farther north.

Rescue crews covered more than 2,100 square miles in an area spanning Bodega Bay to Point Reyes and 20 miles into the water, Read said. They searched for 57 combined hours.

On Sunday morning, an 11-year-old boy was found alive by a motorist on Highway 1, Sonoma County Fire District Division Chief Fire Marshal Cyndi Foreman said Monday. Authorities initially said he was found about 8 a.m. along South Salmon Creek Beach, north of Bodega Bay.

He was stabilized at an area hospital, officials added.

At about noon searchers came across the body of a teenager in the water, Read said.

Dillion said the 11-year-old boy, who was found wearing a vest, was interviewed by first responders. He told them the boat capsized.

On Saturday night through Sunday afternoon, wind gusts off the coast were 30 mph, which is a little strong but nothing out of the ordinary, said Rick Canepa, a National Weather Service meteorologist with the agency’s Monterey office.

The weather service issued a small craft advisory Saturday night through 3 a.m. Monday for an area that included the area where the boat went missing. The Weather Service does not have a specific definition for a “small craft,” though some factors include the “experience of the vessel operator, and the type, overall size, and sea worthiness of the vessel.”

“Inexperienced mariners, especially those operating smaller vessels, should avoid navigating in hazardous conditions,” the advisory states.

The water temperature around Bodega Bay Saturday night and Sunday was around 54 degrees, officials said.

At that temperature, people in the water for sometime can experience cold water shock — causing dramatic changes to heart rate, breathing and blood pressure — and can quickly develop hypothermia, especially if they are moving around more and exposing more of their body to the water.

“It can be overwhelming to try to survive those conditions,” Canepa said.

A beach hazards alert went into effect at 3 p.m. Sunday for the coastal North Bay due to a conditions that could create dangerous breaking waves of 10 to 14 feet, according to the weather service.

The alert warns of an increased chance of rip currents, which are strong and narrow currents that flow away from shore, as well as sneaker waves that move quickly toward shore and can sweep people into the ocean, forecasters added.

Around 10:30 a.m. Sunday, beachgoers along Dillon Beach said they saw multiple helicopters hovering over the mouth of Tomales Bay and then flying north along the coastline toward Bodega Bay and Doran Beach.

They described the helicopters as flying low to the water over the heads of the few surfers bobbing in the waves off Dillon Beach, perhaps 100 feet above the water.

A military plane searched just offshore there, as well, witnesses said, adding that it was circling from the edge of Tomales Point — the northern tip of Point Reyes National Seashore, toward Dillon Beach and the bay mouth.

Besides various Coast Guard units and the Civil Air Patrol, the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing, California State Parks personnel and UTVs, the Sheriff’s Office helicopter Henry-1 and the marine unit, Sonoma County Fire District and the county search and rescue team also searched the area around Bodega Bay.

You can reach Staff Writer Madison Smalstig at [email protected]. On X (Twitter) @madi.smals.