Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Coast Guard ends search for 4 missing yacht racers
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — The search for four yacht crew members thrown from their boat during a weekend race off Northern California was indefinitely suspended, with the Coast Guard saying the "window of survivability" had passed.
The four were part of an eight-member crew racing around the Farallon Islands Saturday when their sailboat was hit by powerful waves that forced it onto rocks.
The body of one crew member was pulled from the water hours after the accident. The three remaining crew members were rescued.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Caleb Critchfield said the search was reluctantly halted at sundown Sunday and there were no plans to resume it, after aircraft and boats searched the ocean around the islands, about 27 miles from San Francisco, for more than 30 hours.
"There's a window of survivability and we searched well beyond that window," he told The Associated Press.
The San Francisco Yacht Club identified the four as Alan Cahill, of Tiburon, Calif.; Jordan Fromm, of San Rafael, Calif.; Elmer Morrissey, of Ireland; Alexis Busch, of Larkspur, Calif.
Club director Ed Lynch he was deeply saddened by news the search had ended.
"The tragedy is incredibly difficult to deal with," he said early Monday.
Critchfield said a C-130 plane, helicopters, three Coast Guard cutters and a smaller boat searched a 5,000-square-mile area with no success.
"Making this kind of decision to call off the search and rescue is never an easy decision," the officer said.
Lynch said the confirmed death was the first known fatality in the 143-year history of the San Francisco Yacht Club, which managed the race for the Offshore Yacht Racing Association and where the yacht involved in the accident, the 38-foot Low Speed Chase, was based.
A century-old tradition, the Full Crew Farallones Race has never been for the faint of heart: Winds averaging 10 to 20 knots and churning 14-foot Pacific Ocean swells are among the rough conditions typically braved by yachts and their crews during the daylong regatta, a spring favorite of skilled sailors.
But on Saturday, powerful waves and a disastrous series of events brought rare tragedy to the august race and the San Francisco Bay area's large sailing community.
Two strong waves swept them from their boat near the rocky islands, the halfway point of the 54-mile race that began at daybreak in San Francisco and had 49 entrants.
Low Speed Chase's owner and captain, 41-year-old James Bradford of Chicago, was among the three survivors whom the U.S. Coast Guard, assisted by National Guard helicopters, pulled from one of the islands about 300 feet from their damaged vessel, Lynch said.
Bradford and another crew member were briefly treated at a hospital, while the third survivor was admitted overnight with a broken leg and contusions, he said.
The seven men and one woman on board ranged in age from their 20s to their 40s, according to Lynch. He said the San Mateo County Coroner's Office has identified the crew member whose dead body was pulled from the water as Marc Kasanin, 46, of Belvedere, Calif.
Lynch said the yacht club, which is located just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco in Belvedere, has 1,400 members and is a place where "lawyers, carpenters and doctors can all have a beer together and talk about their love of sailing." But Saturday's race was likely to attract the most dedicated recreational sailors, he said.
(Continued on page 2)
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