A paddleboarder vanished from view about 100 yards off the Sausalito shoreline Thursday afternoon, triggering an urgent multi-agency search across Marin County waters. Southern Marin Fire District crews responded around 1:15 p.m. to a report of a person in the water near 100 Spinnaker Dr., and the search was still underway more than an hour later with the person's status unknown.
The person had reportedly been out on a paddleboard roughly 100 yards from shore before disappearing from sight, according to Patch. Fire crews later located the paddleboard itself and launched a coordinated search of the surrounding water and shoreline alongside the U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies, the outlet reported.
As of 2:12 p.m. Thursday, the search remained active and no update had been given on the missing person's condition, per the same account. Separately, KTVU described the Coast Guard's search as centered near Spinnaker Point in San Rafael, a location detail that differs from Patch's description of the incident near Spinnaker Dr. in Sausalito. The discrepancy between the two accounts has not been resolved in available reporting.
Marin's Waters Have Claimed Paddleboarders Before
Thursday's search echoes past incidents on the same waterways. In 2024, Marin SAR responded to a paddleboarder who went missing after encountering what the organization described as very rough and stormy conditions. That search stretched between Las Gallinas Creek and the Richmond San Rafael Bridge, with a Coast Guard helicopter eventually locating the missing paddler's board at Point Pinole.
Not every paddleboard emergency in Marin has ended in a prolonged search. In August 2022, the San Rafael Police Department reported that rescue boat Mission City was dispatched to several paddleboarders in trouble off China Camp State Park, ultimately pulling five paddleboarders, five adults, six children and one small boat to safety. The department noted at the time that no one was injured in those rescue cases.
As of the latest available reporting, the fate of Thursday's missing paddleboarder remains unknown, and officials have not released further details on the person's identity or the conditions on the water that afternoon.
