Sailor Presumed Dead After 2 Days Lost at Sea

The U.S. Coast Guard canceled a search for a missing Ventura sailor Saturday afternoon, concluding after 40 hours that the man probably did not survive two nights in the Pacific Ocean.

David Dufau, 37, an experienced sailor who taught elementary school in Ojai, is missing and presumed dead, Coast Guard officials said. A fisherman found Dufau’s catamaran Euphoria capsized 2 1/2 miles northeast of Anacapa Island on Friday morning.

Dufau’s wife, Mary Lynch, reported her husband missing at about midnight Thursday when he failed to return from a two-hour trip to the island.

The U.S. Coast Guard and National Park Service searched more than 900 square miles of ocean, 60 miles of the California coast and Anacapa’s beaches before ending the search at 3:32 p.m. Saturday, said Petty Officer Robert Beals.

The search was ended “based on a negligible chance that the man could be located alive,” Beals said. Even under “optimum conditions,” no one would last much more than 40 hours in the 62-degree water, he said.

On Friday morning, the Ventura Harbor staff found Dufau’s blue Toyota and empty boat trailer in the harbor parking lot, said Deputy Harbormaster Leigh Ross.

Dufau sometimes taught sailing classes for the city of Ventura, said city sailing instructor Leo Robbins.

“I always respected his sailing ability,” Robbins said. “Of all the people for this to happen to, I would least expect it to happen to him. When I saw him sailing that boat, the boat performed very well, and he was in good control of it, going real fast and having fun--and he liked to go fast.”

Robbins remembered a homemade yawl which Dufau sailed while he was in college--a single-masted boat fitted with a second mast and three sails.

“He sailed that funny-looking boat all over the harbor, and everybody laughed, but that thing really went,” Robbins recalled.

The Euphoria was an 18-foot P-Cat, a 10- or 15-year-old fiberglass catamaran which Dufau had fitted with taller rigging and a better sail, Robbins said.

On Saturday, Coast Guard investigators examined the boat on the beach outside their station in Oxnard.

The mast lay broken on the crossbeam, having snapped while the boat was being righted in the water. Two rugby shirts lay stretched on the deck, one emblazoned with a bright-red V and a rugby ball.

Petty Officer Jeff Olsen said investigators found the tiller broken away from the rudder and pieces of thin plastic twine that might have been tied on to hold them together.

Olsen said investigators could not tell whether the steering system had been lashed together in an emergency or if the twine was merely used to fasten something else to the tiller.

“From what I gather, he seems to have been a pretty experienced sailor, so he’s certainly capable of jury-rigging a repair, and he’s certainly capable of throwing a water jug over the side and tying it off to keep it cool,” Olsen said. “It may not be anything at all.”

Beals said the search will remain suspended unless someone spots any more clues to Dufau’s disappearance.