Connecting the Dots of a Rescue and Wreck

A series of Coast Guard search and rescues two weeks ago and a washed-up vessel now appear to be related. On January 21, the Coast Guard rescued three sailors from the 20-something-ft sailboat Pau Mua after it dismasted just outside the Golden Gate, knocking one sailor overboard. The rescue happened five days before the vessel washed up at Stinson Beach on Saturday, which we reported a week ago.

Following the January 21 rescue, the three sailors were taken back to the station for evaluation by EMS, Coast Guard spokesperson Brandyn Hill said, adding, “The vessel had no fittings, and without a mast there was no safe way to tow it. The projected path of the vessel was out to sea.”

Pictures taken of the Pau Mua by Coast Guard rescuers show its collapsed mast haphazardly lashed across the cabintop and a bright-white Johnson outboard motor serving as a rudder clamped to the stern. But there was no sign of the mast or outboard when Andy Spiegel and Katie Smith discovered the boat washed ashore a week later, although the cabin contents appeared largely intact.

GPS coordinates embedded in the Coast Guard images place the rescue location near Bonita Cove, a little less than one nautical mile due east of Point Bonita Lighthouse. At the time of the rescue, the vessel was drifting southwest, Hill said, but it eventually came to shore at Stinson Beach some eight nautical miles to the northwest.

Hill said the Coast Guard learned from San Francisco Police Department radio traffic on Channel 16 that the Pau Mua was in danger, but a police spokesperson was not able to confirm.

About an hour after the rescue, around 6:20 p.m., a photographer on land in San Francisco called 911 to report a sailboat appeared to be sinking approximately one mile offshore. Lt. Jonathan Baxter, a San Francisco Fire Department spokesperson, said they relayed the call to the Coast Guard.

“The ocean is too violent for our boats out there, so we depend on the Coast Guard for response that far out of the Bay,” Baxter said. “They did an extensive search using helicopters and boats and found nothing to lead them to a sinking vessel. We were canceled from shore.”

Hill said the Coast Guard — which was working without pay at the time of this incident because of the government shutdown — believes it is likely the 911 caller observed the Pau Mua adrift with no one aboard but conducted the search because they weren’t able to rule out the possibility of another vessel in distress.

That caller was Peter Kay.

“I was strolling along the Lands End trail, unable to ID this small white object mid-channel out of the Golden Gate,” Kay wrote us in an email. “It was triangular and stationary over quite a long time — I’ve hiked this trail for years and had never seen any object like that from afar. I found someone with a camera and a decent telephoto lens; he took a photo and enlarged it to reveal a mast with two white sails. At that point, after poor reception, I called 911 and asked for the Coast Guard. I finally was able to call in around 4:30 p.m., but was unsure if they understood me. I kept trying until they confirmed the location. They called me back 6:00 p.m. for more questions, SF Fire was at the Cliff House later trying to contact the Coast Guard, but they didn’t send out a helicopter until much later after dark.”

Even though the 911 call did not result in another rescue, Baxter did not want to discourage the public from calling if they see a boat in danger.

“Let us come out and see if it is an actual emergency or not,” he said. “And that’s exactly what this person did. They weren’t sure what they were seeing, but they firmly believed they were seeing a boat in distress, and they called it in. We would much rather take our resources out and confirm.”

On the same day as the Coast Guard rescue, a body was found at Ocean Beach in an unrelated incident.