San Rafael, CA – First responders from multiple agencies searched for the occupant of a 10-foot boat that capsized Wednesday morning about a mile off Muir Beach on the Marin County coast.
Three helicopters and a variety of vessels searched the area after another boater used a marine radio frequency to make a mayday call upon the discovery of a capsized vessel at 11:30 a.m., according to Marin County Fire Department Battalion Chief Bret McTigue.
As of 5:15 p.m., authorities had made no contact with the single occupant of the white fiberglass skiff. The Coast Guard identified the person as Juki Dang, a 64-year-old man from Oakland.
“We are still in rescue mode, and we’re committing personnel there into the night,” McTigue said.
Personnel from Marin County Fire, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Park Service, Southern Marin Fire, Muir Beach Fire, the California Highway Patrol and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office participated in the search. The search area was up to two miles off the coast, north to Duxbury Reef off the shore of Bolinas and south to Fort Cronkhite, near the southern tip of Marin County within the Marin Headlands.
After the mayday call, Marin County Fire diverted instructors and participants from a water rescue training session that was taking place at Stinson Beach. Instructors and 14 firefighter trainees from multiple fire agencies mounted six small rescue watercraft and headed south from Stinson Beach to Muir Beach, a distance of six miles. The search party reached the capsized boat within 12 minutes of the mayday call.
The boat was righted by Marin County Fire personnel, and a U.S. Coast Guard was in the process of towing the boat to an unknown location within San Francisco Bay as of 5:15 p.m. McTigue said an ice chest with fish inside it was found inside the boat. Coast Guard personnel later found the missing man’s car keys and wallet.
Anyone with any information about Dang is requested to contact Coast Guard Sector San Francisco at 415-399-3547 or via VHF-FM radio channel 16.
On April 6, the same group of water rescue instructors from Marin County Fire were preparing to conduct a training at Dillon Beach on Tomales Bay when two of them
found a dog on a rocky beach. The dog matched the description of one that had been missing since a boat capsized three days earlier. One man died in that incident; another man and a second dog survived. The rescued dog was reunited with the deceased man’s family.