Memorial Planned for 3 Boaters

A memorial “float-by” will be held today for three men who died last Sunday when their boat capsized during a fishing excursion to Anacapa Island.

Boaters are invited to meet at noon outside the Channel Islands Harbor breakwater, said Greg Coats, 43, of Oxnard, who is organizing the memorial. Coats said he knows of at least eight vessels that will participate.

Ronald Bailey, 50, and his nephew Thomas Lee Moyd, 33, both of Oxnard, and Billy Joe Halfacre, 62, of Culver City drowned when Halfacre’s wooden fishing vessel, the Galleano, was split open by the force of 15-foot waves, authorities said.

“I’m thinking about doing a cruise by the dock where the boat was berthed, or a sail all the way to the spot where the boat went down,” Coats said. Coats, who owns the sailboat Day Tripper, had not decided Saturday night which trip he wanted boats to take.

“It could be five hours or it could be an hour,” he said. “I’m not real sure.”

“I think going out into the deep water is significant” because Halfacre was a deep sea fisherman, Coats said. The weather will be a deciding factor, he added.

“I never met any of these people; I never saw them face to face,” Coats said, although he spoke with them many times by radio. “Now they’re gone. It could be that tomorrow I could go out, anybody could go out and not come back. The ocean is the judge on that.”