Two Ukiah residents out for a day of fishing died when the charter boat they were on capsized off the Oregon Coast Saturday morning. Seven others among the 19 passengers also died, and two more are missing and presumed dead.

Kathy Corley, 49, and her second cousin Dennis Tipton, 70, were aboard the 32-foot Taki Tooo, when a large wave flipped the boat. The ocean off the coast of Garibaldi was rough enough Saturday that the harbor had been closed to recreational boats because of waves estimated at 15 feet high. But it wasn’t closed to charter boats like the Taki Tooo.

Corley, a correctional officer at the Umatilla County Jail, loved being in the outdoors and on the coast. When she decided to go to the coast, Tipton, who lived alone in a doublewide trailer in Ukiah, offered to go with her. Tipton was a retired logger who had spent much of his life as a heavy equipment operator.

Corley “absolutely loved the coast,” said Pam Carstens, a correctional officer who has worked with Corley since Corley began in March of 1996. “We just went together in April.”

According to Carstens and Umatilla County Deputy Sheriff Bob Hensel, Corley had been helping open a historical museum in Albee. Corley loved to roam antique shops looking for trinkets from the past that could be put into the museum.

Corley was known and admired by those around her as a fair and honest person, as well as a hard-nosed officer, Carstens and Hensel said.

“If you did something, Kathy would call you on it,” Carstens said. “She was hard all the way across the board.”

Corley may have been small in stature but she was not intimidated by anything, said Carstens, noting that Corley’s days as a bartender in Ukiah helped make her tough.

“Even if there’s a real frightening guy (in the jail), she wasn’t scared,” Carstens said.

The Umatilla County Sheriff’s Department plans to create a memorial plaque in Corley’s name to be given annually to an employee who has gone “above and beyond” the call of duty, Carstens said. The first honoree will be awarded in July. The plaque, Carstens said, will hang in the break room at the jail.

Saturday’s accident brought grief to many around the state, and survivors are still working with officials to sort through exactly what happened.

“We went through a couple rough waves and turned north to try to get around a pretty large wave but then it crashed into the side,” recalled survivor Tyler Bohnet, 28, of Canby.

“Most people on the deck were thrown off the boat,” he said Sunday. “I was able to swim to a life raft that was floating but I kept getting knocked off it until I couldn’t get on it again. Then I tried swimming to shore until I got to shallow enough water that some men came out and helped me.”

Bohnet was on the fishing trip with his father, Sigmund, who didn’t survive.

Survivor Mark Hamlett of Portland told KOIN-TV, the local CBS affiliate, that there were two 12- to 15-foot waves, followed by one that was at least 20-feet high.

“At that point, I knew we were going to get wet,” Hamlett said. “And he (the captain) turned (the boat) – something that I don’t think I would have ever done. But he turned from the west to the north and was parallel to the wave, and I mean, I saw it coming. When we rolled, I did not expect to take another breath.”

Hamlett told the television station he and his sons, Chris and Daniel, made it inside the hull of the boat.

“(It was) like being in a very, very large washing machine with the worst agitator you can think of,” Hamlett said.

Ted Lopatkiewicz, the spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the agency was aware of reports that the boat had turned sharply to the north, but that officials haven’t drawn any conclusions about whether it was a factor in the accident.

Marsha Sundberg of Cheney, Wash., said her husband, Barry, had gone on his annual fishing trip with his good friends from the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroad.

“They’ve been doing it every year for 10 years,” she told the Associated Press Sunday.

Her husband is one of the two missing men, and that makes it harder for his loved ones, Sundberg said.

“They called off the search and now they’re just waiting for the tides and hoping his body is washed to shore,” she said. “I don’t know what to do, whether to do a memorial service or wait for a funeral. It’s just so hard.”

She described her husband as a “regular, average guy” who was looking forward to retirement in seven years and spending more time with his two grandsons.

Missing were Sundberg and Tim Albus of Madras.

The survivors were listed as: Bohnet; the Hamletts; Brian Loll of Vancouver, Wash.; Richard Forsman of Vancouver, Wash.; Dale Brown of Portland and Buell.

In addition to the Ukiah duo, the nine people who died Saturday were: Hidalgo; Steve Albus of Ephrata, Wash.; Sigmund Bohnet, of Collinsville, Ill.; Edward Loll of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Larry Frick of Spokane, Wash.; Terry Galloway of Portland; and the boat’s captain, Doug Davis of Garibaldi.