died<\/a> of an accidental drug overdose at age 22. One of Clifford\u2019s children, Cheryl, died at age 13 in 1994. In addition to Maria, Ralph lost another daughter, Andrea, in 1995 at age 22.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s been a lot of tragedy,\u201d Ralph Boisa said.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, after the family spread Maria\u2019s ashes and visited Angel Island, a scenic state park, the boat headed past Alcatraz Island, the site of the infamous former prison, on its way back to the harbor.<\/p>\n
The morning\u2019s calm conditions had deteriorated. Winds had picked up, gusting to about 30 miles per hour, and the waves may have reached about four feet high in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, said Brian Garcia, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n
Around 3:20 p.m., the boat was slammed by a wave and began tilting heavily, the authorities said. Water rushed in. Several passengers were thrown overboard, while others were trapped inside a cabin on the vessel\u2019s middle level.<\/p>\n
Mike Montoya, 38, was driving a small commercial fishing boat a few miles away with a friend when he saw what looked like smoke billowing in the distance. The two sped over. \u201cIt was like a scene out of the Titanic,\u201d Mr. Montoya said in an interview.<\/p>\n
One man, bobbing up and down in the waves, clung to an inflatable ring and shouted that he could not swim. A few feet away, a woman grasped onto a kayak. A man who appeared to be the captain, wearing a corduroy hat that read \u201cVolare,\u201d hung onto the bottom of the vessel, which was already halfway submerged.<\/p>\n
People trapped inside the cabin of the boat scrambled as water flooded in around them, Mr. Montoya said. Among them was Yvonne Thatcher, Ralph Boisa\u2019s oldest daughter, who had been pushed to one side of the cabin as furniture and chairs went flying. She was able to reach a door while the boat was sideways and climb out, her father said.<\/p>\n
Outside, Mr. Montoya and his friend maneuvered their small, 22-foot boat around the wreckage, past life jackets, wooden ladders, couch cushions, purses and speakers floating in the waves. One by one, they pulled people from the water.<\/p>\n
One was an older woman, who had apparently organized the gathering of friends and family. \u201cShe kept saying, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m sorry \u2014 I got all these people together for this memorial,\u2019\u201d Mr. Montoya recalled.<\/p>\n
Denee Payne, whose husband is part of the extended Boisa clan, and her childhood friend, Tondra Miller, had been retrieving their jackets from the boat\u2019s cabin when the rogue wave struck the boat. They were able to run back up to the top deck, holding hands, but soon were tossed into the choppy bay waters. People were clutching one side of the boat, making it tip even more, so they decided to spread out.<\/p>\n
The longtime friends treaded water and encouraged each other to \u201ckeep kicking,\u201d recalled Ms. Miller\u2019s sister-in-law, Kira Madruga, who was not on the boat but learned what had happened later from Ms. Payne.<\/p>\n
The whitecaps were tall. At some point, Ms. Payne turned around to look for her friend. Ms. Miller was gone.<\/p>\n
Inside the boat, it took only a few minutes for water in the cabin to rise up to the shoulders of the people stuck inside, Mr. Montoya said. Just a small air pocket remained.<\/p>\n
Mr. Montoya and his friend lobbed fishing weights, lead balls that weigh about a pound, at the glass windows. A young family member pounded on the windows to try to crack them to free people. Inside the cabin, the passengers pressed their fists to the glass.<\/p>\n
Within minutes, only the maroon top of the ship was still above the water. And soon, it had sunk entirely, on its way down to the bottom, 120 feet below.<\/p>\n
Rescue crews, which had arrived from cities across the Bay Area, began ferrying people to shore. Clifford Boisa was first, as he wasn\u2019t breathing and needed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Paramedics soon pronounced him dead.<\/p>\n
All of the survivors were soaked. Some were missing shoes. Others had scrapes on their heads and cuts on their legs. One woman repeatedly cried out for her mother, who was missing.<\/p>\n
The following day, on Wednesday, family and friends of the passengers gathered at a Coast Guard debriefing in the city. A chaplain said a prayer. Quin Madruga, the brother of Ms. Miller, who was still missing, said he left the gathering certain of the worst.<\/p>\n
The next day, the authorities found a body floating in the water west of Treasure Island. Mr. Madruga was able to provide the coroner with details about his sister\u2019s tattoos \u2014 a chili pepper and a sun \u2014 that confirmed it was her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI lost my breath when they told me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ms. Miller lived in the city of Folsom in the Sacramento region and had an adult son. She loved boating and used to motor to McCovey Cove, the waterway outside the Giants baseball stadium, where she would wait for homers sailing over the outfield fence.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was fearless,\u201d said Ms. Madruga, her sister-in-law. <\/p>\n
Clifford Boisa\u2019s wife, Jackie, and his sister, Carol, were believed to be trapped in the boat\u2019s cabin and remain missing. A family dog also died in the accident.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear exactly why the boat sank, and officials say it could take longer than a month to finish investigating. The authorities located the wreckage of the boat on Friday and might try to bring it to the surface.<\/p>\n
Several boating experts said the boat may have already had a leak, or that its portholes may have been open, allowing in a deluge of water when it rocked. They said that its sudden tilting could have pushed all the passengers to one side, making matters worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually it takes a combination of those kinds of things just at the wrong time to cause something like that to happen,\u201d said Randell Sharpe, a marine accident investigator in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n
John Boisa did not respond to requests for comment. A local news outlet<\/a> reported that he had shared a statement that said he saw Clifford as \u201ca mentor and role model to me growing up. I cherished him, and much of the person I am was formed by his example. The loss of him is a crushing anguish.\u201d<\/p>\nHe asked for privacy while his family processed their grief: \u201cWe and several families have suffered a horrific loss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ralph Boisa said he couldn\u2019t wrap his head around how such a tragedy had happened. John was an experienced captain, his brother said, and often took relatives out for summertime excursions under the bridge.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knows what he\u2019s doing on the water,\u201d Ralph Boisa said. \u201cI just can\u2019t imagine what could\u2019ve done this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amy Graff and Jacey Fortin contributed reporting and Kirsten Noyes contributed research to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Boisa family and their friends had finally completed a sad task 11 years in the making. On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[162056,156211,162055,15201,101,8264,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-403972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-alcatraz-san-francisco","tag-boats-and-boating","tag-grief-emotion","tag-rescues","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-bay-area-calif","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}