Last Sunday afternoon near the Cliff House, diners and wait staff at the restaurant noticed a sailboat in distress in the waters below. Rescue crews later recovered two bodies from the accident.
The man and woman were married couple Jeffrey Easterling, 59, and Beth Easterling, 50, of El Sobrante, California. Jeffrey Easterling was an experienced sailor who had been piloting his 33 foot boat, the Barcarolle, for more than 25 years.
Friends of the couple told the Chronicle that he was very safety conscious. “He was a very good sailor and a very careful sailor,” said Bonnie Russell, who first went sailing aboard the Barcarolle in the 1980s. “Jeff always conducted person-overboard drills, and was always very, very careful.”
The couple had been planning a longer sailing trip to Cabo San Lucas. To prepare, they embarked on their first sailing trip outside the Bay which was new territory for them and the sailboat.
Mike Tryon, the commodore of Richmond’s Marina Bay Yacht Club where the Easterlings were members, told SFWeekly, “They had expressed to me how they wanted to go out the Gate [out of the bay and into the open ocean] but were a little concerned with doing that.”
Beth Easterling’s daughter, Gina Ortolan, said the couple’s Sunday sail to Pillar Point, on the San Mateo County coast, was a test run in preparation for the longer trip. It’s believed that they left Pillar Point around noon. At roughly 4:30pm, diners and the wait staff at the Cliff House first noticed the capsized Barcarolle.
By that point, no one was aboard and when the Coast Guard reached the boat, the sails were still set and some of the boat’s windows were smashed.
Rescuers recovered Beth Easterling’s body from Seal Rock and later called off the search for her husband due to darkness. For a time, rescuers thought there might have been a third person on board, but family and friends later confirmed the Easterlings had no other passengers on board.
The next morning, Jeffrey Easterling’s body washed ashore at Ocean Beach near Balboa Street and the Barcarolle was recovered from Eagle’s Point near China Beach where it crashed.
Sean Santana witnessed the boat crashing into Eagle’s Point, and in the video below, describes it washing ashore. He notes that the autopilot mechanism was still engaged on the boat.
Authorities do not yet know why the Easterlings fell or were swept overboard, though the high winds on Sunday were likely a contributing factor. Neither was wearing a life jacket when their bodies were recovered.
Jeffrey and Beth Easterling had only been married for five years. Both loved sailing and went out on the Bay any chance they could.
Sarah B.
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