Gary Farrell Winery executive dies in Lake County boating accident

By Mary Callahan & Kevin McCallum

Lake County investigators were still working out Wednesday just how it happened that a Santa Rosa winery executive who died in a water skiing accident was struck by the very boat that had been towing him.

Gary Anthony Archer, 55, was supposed to be gliding toward the shore of Lake Pillsbury on Monday night when instead he ended up in the water as the boat turned sharply back toward the center of the lake, striking him, sheriff's officials said.

Firefighters on the scene said Archer suffered severe injuries and may have died from the blow before there was a chance for him to drown, Lake Pillsbury Fire Chief Mike Josephson said. An autopsy was conducted Tuesday but no preliminary cause of death was released, Lake County Sheriff's Capt. James Bauman said.

Archer, 55, was the operations manager for Gary Farrell Winery in Healdsburg whose staff was taking the news hard, said Tony Lombardi, a spokesman at VinCraft, which owns the winery.

“It's horrible,” Lombardi said. “It's hard to believe. I just saw him Thursday or Friday.”

“He was the most magnanimous person,” Archer's stepson Anthony Picetti. “It's a terrible loss for everyone, not just the family.”

Lombardi said Archer and his family made a summer ritual of renting a campsite on the shores of Lake Pillsbury, located in the Mendocino National Forest, north of Clear Lake.

Sometime before 8 p.m. Monday, Archer was being towed behind his Glasstron GT 150 powerboat operated by San Francisco resident Christian John Speckman, 39, when Speckman apparently steered toward the shore then made a sharp turn to whip Archer toward shore, a common water skiing maneuver, Bauman said. Several other people also were in the boat, he said.

It was not clear if Archer let go of the tow rope, as would normally be the case, or how it was he ended up in the path of the boat, Bauman said.

A problem with dispatching calls to the remote area, where there is no repeater, meant there was about a 25-minute delay in local firefighters being alerted, Josephson said.

When medics arrived, Archer's companions already had pulled him onto a dock at the Lake Pillsbury Resort on the lake's north shore and were attempting CPR, Josephson said.

A Bay Area doctor vacationing at the resort pronounced him dead, Bauman said.

Archer was the top executive at Gary Farrell, which built a reputation for stellar Russian River pinot noir. It had been bounced between several corporate owners in recent years before being sold recently by troubled Ascentia Wine Estates of Healdsburg to VinCraft of Sonoma.

Bauman said the investigation is ongoing.

Note: In an earlier version of this story Anthony Picetti was misidentified.