Rough seas that flipped a fishing boat Saturday morning kept hammering the five people tossed into Tomales Bay, draining their strength as they clung to life in the frigid water.
One of them — a 6-year-old girl — was trapped beneath the overturned vessel. Her father dove under, reaching blindly in water where he couldn’t know what hazards — fishing gear, lines or ropes — might be lurking.
Just offshore, waves that had started the day deceptively calm were now folding in on themselves — swells wrapping around Tomales Point, the sandbar magnifying each crash. The group had been fishing for rockfish about a mile south of the point, taking advantage of a lull in the tide that made the bay seem manageable. But the return trip was less forgiving.
As they traveled between two waves during the outgoing tide, the back swell caught up to the boat, burying its nose in the wake. The vessel flipped bow-first near the bar at the mouth of the bay.
From a hilltop home overlooking the water, Steve Werlin saw the boat go under. A friend called 911. Werlin called the Voglers, longtime owners and operators of Lawson’s Landing.
At the Landing, a mile away, Willy Vogler and his son, Cameron Vogler, acted without hesitation. The two jumped into a 17-foot Boston Whaler known as the “Shrimp Boat!”, a vessel with a history of towing stranded fishermen to safety. They barely remembered to check the fuel tank before throttling into the whitecaps, they said.
“You’re moving fast enough that you don’t have time to think much about, ‘Is this dumb? Should I really be doing this?’” Cameron Vogler told The Press Democrat.
The pair charged through the chop, the hull slamming against each swell as spray exploded over the bow. At one point, the boat caught about 10 feet of air before crashing back onto the surface, a friend watching through binoculars later told Cameron Vogler. Overhead, the Sonoma County sheriff’s helicopter, Henry-1, circled the wreckage, its crew scanning for survivors.
Much of what happened next, as the Voglers and sheriff’s officials told The Press Democrat, unfolded in a blur of wind, waves and quick decisions.
Within minutes, the Voglers reached the capsized boat. The father was still in the water, barely conscious. He had managed to pull his daughter — still in her life jacket — onto the surface. Cameron Vogler grabbed her and pulled her aboard. Then came her father, pushed up from below by another survivor. Willy Vogler steadied the boat as the three of them collapsed on deck, shivering and drained.
The father said nothing. Cameron Vogler promised the girl a cup of hot chocolate. The third survivor scanned the water, looking for the other two passengers.
Henry-1 hovered over the coastline, its long-line rescuer slipping on swim fins midair before dropping toward a remote beach at Tomales Point, where the final survivors had been swept ashore.
The rescuer hooked them into the line and lifted them one by one into the aircraft, according to a Sheriff’s Office video.
When the second long-line rescue landed, the rescuer told one survivor the good news.
“They all made it to shore,” he said, referring to the other passengers. “They’re OK.”
At Lawson’s Landing, ambulances were already waiting. The Voglers motored in, soaked to the bone but steady, handing off the father and daughter to paramedics. Moments later, the helicopter landed nearby, lowering its final passengers onto the sand.
All five were alive — hypothermic, shaken, but alive.
The U.S. Coast Guard, California Highway Patrol helicopter H-30, and fire crews from Sonoma and Marin counties joined the effort, helping ferry survivors to hospitals.
In the aftermath, Cameron Vogler described the dangerous conditions that can catch even experienced boaters off guard. The sandbar near Tomales Point, he noted, is especially perilous this time of year as tides shift and swells stack unpredictably.
“There is a lot of danger in thinking it only happens to fools,” he said, “because everyone thinks they are not a fool.”
Later that evening, back on shore, Willy Vogler described the rescue — the waves, the chaos, and the moments between instinct and fear — in his fishing blog, but not as a hero’s tale.
“For the record, we aren’t lifeguards or rescue guys,” he wrote. “We just heard that there was a problem and responded. It’s what you do.”