Jim Gray, 63, the noted database researcher, veteran of stints
at IBM, Tandem Computers, and most recently Microsoft, is missing
at sea. He set out Sunday morning to do something that I have done
twice, sail from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge across 27 miles
of ocean to the Farallon Islands. He hasn't returned.
I once did a long interview with Jim Gray on parallel processing
and database operation. Relational databases presented a good
opportunity to take advantage of parallel processing, he said, and
patiently explained how both the SQL query and the access of
records in the database itself could be broken down into parallel
functions.
He had a teacher's patience with my questions. We talked for over
an hour until I felt the subject was exhausted, or at least the
limits of my understanding had been exhausted. But I felt he was
willing to continue and dive deeper, if I had been so inclined. I
was grateful for such open sharing of knowledge.
Now the Coast Guard's helicopter, its C-130 search plane, two
87-foot patrol boats, a 41-foot Coast Guard utility boat, and an
Alameda County maritime patrol boat are searching 1,750 square
miles of ocean for him. That's not very reassuring.
The route to the Farallons is a straightforward one. It follows the
commercial shipping channel, marked by buoys on each side, for
about half the distance. As you reach the area where the container
ships and other commercial vessels take on their San Francisco Bay
pilots to guide them through the Golden Gate, you have another 13
to 14 nautical miles to traverse, but as you leave the San
Francisco shoreline behind, there's only a brief interlude of an
hour or two of open water before the Farallon Islands appear in
front of you. They're on a compass heading similar to the shipping
channel's path.
By regulation, sailboats carry VHF radios, life preservers, fire
extinguishers, flare signals, all the simple lifesaving gear that
will get you out of many of the extremities you might stumble into.
Near the Farallon Islands, it's possible a radio distress call
wouldn't reach back to land, but there are almost always ships
within the radio's 22- to 23-mile range to pick up the signal. No
such signal was reported from any quarter.
Experienced sailors are asking, did the one calamity that can
befall a single-handed sailing vessel occur? That is, did the
skipper fall overboard and his boat sail away from him before he
could get a hold on it? Single-handers typically wear a harness
that keeps them linked to the boat, even if pitched overboard.
Besides, where's the boat?, we're asking.
The weather was clear, the winds were light, the waves 4- to 5-feet
high, according to weather reports. With Gray's 40-foot boat,
Tenacious, these conditions should not have presented a big
challenge. My boat, the 25-foot Calypso Poet, took the waves at 6
to 7 feet without incident on a previous expedition.
I hope that he will yet be found in some unexpected quarter. The
rudder jammed and he ended up far off course. Perhaps Tenacious
developed a leak that overwhelmed the bilge pump, and he's astride
the hull somewhere, waiting to be picked up. Sailboats hulls float,
even when waterlogged. But the water's cold. Experienced sailors
are worried about Jim Gray.
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If he's really gone, we will lose one great database analyst.