Ocean search resumes for Irish tourist

A woman feared drowned off of the Sonoma Coast was identified Monday as Nuala O’Donohoe, who’d come to California from Ireland for a meditation retreat.

O’Donohoe, 42, was from Dublin, said Jeremy Stinson, supervising ranger at Sonoma Coast State Park. She disappeared Saturday afternoon and was presumed drowned after clothing was found floating in the ocean.

State park rangers will continue searching Monday, hoping to find her body in the Salt Point area.

O’Donohoe apparently had been meditating on a rocky outcropping in Horseshoe Cove, at Salt Point State Park when she was washed into the ocean, rangers said.

The rocks there are exposed and the surf Saturday was very big, Stinson said.

O’Donohoe was with others that day at the coast from the retreat. They also were meditating individually, but not within eyesight, at nearby points.

The group was to meet back at a car at 3:30 p.m. When O’Donohoe didn’t return, they walked back to where they’d seen her last.

They found some of her clothes and a backpack and spotted her pants as they washed out to sea.

A search Saturday and Sunday by rangers, the U.S. Coast Guard boat and helicopter failed to locate O’Donohoe or her body.

Monday a state parks lifeguard was to comb the coast on a Jet Ski-like personal watercraft, Stinson said.

“It’s difficult to predict where a body might end up, if it’s going to come back to shore,” he said.

O’Donohoe had arrived in California in late September for the retreat.

State park rangers worked with Dublin police to contact the woman’s family. Her next-of-kin is a sister, Stinson said.