Jim Gray missing at sea

Jim Gray is a legendary computer scientist and a personal friend. I was just reading Robert Scoble's blog and found out that Jim is missing at sea after not returning from a sailing trip outside San Francisco bay on Sunday. Jim is an experienced sailor, has a great boat, and has sailed alone many times.

This from the San Jose Mercury News;

The search continued today for the pioneering Bay Area computer scientist who went missing after he left Sunday morning for what he told family was a day sailing trip to the Farallon Islands to dispose of his mother's ashes.

There still are no sign of Jim Gray or his boat, a 40-foot C&C yacht named Tenacious, Coast Guard Petty Officer Jonathan Cole said.

The Coast Guard continued its search overnight of 4,000 square miles of area surrounding the Farallon Islands, which are located 27 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. A C-130 fixed wing aircraft, a helicopter and several patrol boats are involved in today's operation.

I have known Jim for nearly 20 years. We worked together in the same group at Digital Equipment Corp, and now we both work for Microsoft. I am praying that they find him soon on an island or in a cove somewhere working out a complex database problem.

Comments

[Roger Jennings]

Links to video clips about the search and additional background on Jim Gray's proposals for building very large databases with CyberBricks are at http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/us-coast-guard-searching-for-jim-gray.html.

--rj

[Steve Morsa]

A prayer here too Don that the Coast Guard finds your friend alive, well, and soon.

[Diego Vega]

Don, I don't know Jim, but I would love to! Here is the link to Amazon's Mechanical Turk site in which anyone can help find him by visually scanning aerial images in search of Jim's vessel:

http://www.mturk.com/mturk/startiterator?iteartorSearchSpec=HITGroupSearch%23T%231%2310%23-1%23T%23%21keyword_list%212%21rO0ABXQAA0ppbQ--%21Reward%216%21rO0ABXQABDAuMDA-%21%23%21NumHITs%211%21%23%21

[Cazz]

Yes, I too hope this geniuinely nice man is found safe soon. I just learnt of this last night when driving home from work and listening to talk back radio. I am shocked nothing more had been said on the news here(in Australia) any time earlier, given he is such a remarkable man.