The Sinking of ‘Volare’ — A Perfect Storm?

It was not a stormy day on San Francisco Bay, though it may have been a “perfect storm” that caused the truly horrific tragedy of the 1981 50-ft Marine Trader Volare’s sinking on Tuesday. A “perfect storm” is now a metaphor about an unusual set of circumstances that combine to cause a tragedy. To most knowledgeable sailors and boaters, Tuesday’s sunny July sailing conditions were no different than normal for summer racing or cruising on the Bay.

Experienced boaters like Chuck Hawley and Robert Hull commented on our Wednesday story, essentially reaffirming what we believe to be the most likely scenario. Absent any unusual discoveries in the future, we suspect the large, robust trawler was sideways to the wind as she traveled north to south across the Bay to return to San Francisco Marina. A large number of the guests were on the top deck, making the boat more unstable than normal. A breezy day with a slowly building ebb created an increasingly choppy Bay, but again, nothing outside the ordinary for summer sailing. Potentially a somewhat larger-than-average wave and a larger-than-average gust rolled the boat to leeward, at which point the very large bimini, ideal for the hot sun of the boat’s Delta homeport, also caught the wind, heeling the boat further. At that point, everyone on the top deck might slip toward the leeward rail, heeling the boat even further, at which point open engine intakes or ports might have started to flood the hull. Additional speculation in comments and local sailor, Paul Kamen, theorize that perhaps the ‘fire’ was actually steam from a disconnected hose in the engine room that was letting unnoticed water in the bilge, further reducing stability. 

There is a lot of speculation in the above thoughts. Even if they recover the boat, it will likely take weeks or months to do a full investigation of the factors contributing to the Volare disaster. Personally, we’re more used to sailboats with keels, but we know many boats like the 50-ft Marine Trader are well-built ocean cruisers that are normally very capable of handling the chop on San Francisco Bay and cruising the California coastline. Indeed, Volare has cruised the California coast a number of times where she would have navigated much larger swells. There are probably a good number of woulda-coulda-shouldas in a situation like this, but at this point, it is very hard to understand anything beyond a momentary setup of very unfortunate circumstances that created some incredibly bad luck.

Surfers patiently wait offshore for the perfect wave, since they know that periodically, the perfect wave will give them the best ride to the beach. Sailors look for the extra puff of wind that will give them extra speed. Sometimes that normal wave set will combine with a ferry wake or some other wave set to create an extra-large wave. The confluence of wind and wave anomalies could have just been off.

What stands out the most in the general media reporting about the Bay is a severe lack of understanding about the Bay itself. It can definitely be a challenging place to sail, but over Latitude’s almost 50 years of reporting, there are remarkably few tragedies of this nature given the volume of activity. We were interviewed by the Bay Area News Agency about the disaster and found ourselves explaining the Bay like a ski area. The Central Bay is a black diamond run and there are many blue circles and green-square areas of more benign conditions. And even the breezy, choppy conditions that do exist on the Bay happen mostly during May through September, and then only on some days during the afternoons. That would be a Tuesday afternoon in July, though again, conditions on Tuesday weren’t anything unusual for most boats, including a Marine Trader,.

There are millions of very safe ski days each year in the Sierra, yet this year’s tragic event on Donner Pass was another example of a rare, extreme confluence of events that created an outsized disaster. Occasionally, a golfer gets hit by lightning. The fire aboard the Conception dive boat was tragic beyond comprehension but also a one-in-a-million event. We think most people who spend time on the Bay feel safer out on a boat than they do while driving to a boat. We certainly have to leave the door open to many other possibilities that might have caused or contributed to this disaster but will have to wait for a more detailed investigation. We could speculate about numerous other possible causes and factors.

Another aspect of the rescue that might escape attention in this story is the critical importance of the Gashouse Cove fuel dock. The cove, the dock and fuel can all be critical in an emergency situation. That is where the rescue boats rendezvoused with the emergency vehicles to take victims to the hospital. If more fuel was needed for ongoing rescue operations, the fuel was right there. Our understanding is that San Francisco Rec and Park is planning to close this vital link to the Bay, which, when not used for the extremely rare emergency, is also public access for San Francisco citizens. It is also the only San Francisco-based fuel dock for commercial, recreational and public-agency refueling.

It’s not surprising that, in the rush to publish, so many “facts” from early reporting were wrong. We were asked by a boating friend last night why anyone would take a pontoon boat out on the Bay. It was not a pontoon boat, but the large bimini gave it that appearance, so it was reported and has stuck with many. However, it’s also apparent the general media is not helping the general public understand the Bay, where people sail, fish, swim, kayak, wingfoil and otherwise connect with the Bay Area’s largest park: the Bay itself. The lack of access and connection to the Bay leaves most people on shore with very little understanding of its true nature .

This is a tragedy of devastating proportions. At present, we don’t think it was caused by any unusual conditions of the Bay, the boat or the captain. It was a huge misfortune likely caused by a “perfect storm” of circumstances that set up a tragic outcome. But at the end of it all, our sympathies lie with the people and the families involved in Tuesday’s tragedy.