Four Injured After Pleasure Boat Runs Aground Near Brooks Island Off Richmond

Four adults were pulled from a grounded pleasure boat near Brooks Island off Richmond on Saturday night after the vessel ran onto a break wall in shallow water, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, CBS Bay Area and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Coast Guard Sector San Francisco watchstanders said Richmond Fire Department reported at about 8:19 p.m. Oct. 3 that a 25-foot craft had run aground on the break wall near Brickyard Cove, just west of Brooks Island and the Richmond Marina. The Station San Francisco response-boat crew arrived about 8:33 p.m. and reported that all four people aboard had serious injuries, the Coast Guard said in a release carried by HLCOPTERS.

Cross-bay rescue

The Coast Guard requested mutual aid from the San Francisco Fire Department, which sent rescue boats and found the vessel perched on a jetty-style rock structure, CBS and the Chronicle reported. Two injured boaters were transferred to Richmond Fire Department EMS for hospital transport; a San Francisco fire boatcrew moved a third person to EMS. A Coast Guard Air Station San Francisco MH-65E Dolphin helicopter hoisted the fourth person and transferred them to emergency crews at San Francisco International Airport for transport to a trauma center. Conditions of the four were not publicly detailed.

Lt. Cmdr. Carey Lewis, incident management division chief at Coast Guard Sector San Francisco, said swift coordination with partner agencies "helped ensure four people were safely rescued and quickly connected with higher level of care they needed."

Boat still on the rocks

As of Monday evening, CBS reported, the vessel — named Trophy — remained hard aground on the break wall, posed no navigation hazard and showed no observed pollution. Coast Guard personnel were working with the vessel's representative and the Richmond and San Francisco police departments on salvage options. Authorities had not announced a cause.

Brooks Island is a preserve in San Francisco Bay off Richmond's Inner Harbor that the East Bay Regional Park District generally opens only through guided tours, the Chronicle noted. Nighttime grounding on a rock structure in that shallow stretch is a reminder that the channel approaches around Richmond can turn hazardous quickly when visibility drops — even before investigators say what put Trophy onto the jetty.