Family: Object was not missing cooler

The Coast Guard says it’s still optimistic two teenage fishermen missing at sea can be found alive.

Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen – went missing Friday afternoon while boating off the coast near Jupiter Inlet.

“These children are surrounded by water from the moment that they’re born”, she says.

Soto said three Coast Guard cutters and a C-130 Hercules airplane searched throughout Monday night for the boys.

“I’ve been praying every day and doing everything I can possibly do to make them come home”, a friend said through tears. They were reported missing less than four hours later, after thunderstorms, high winds, big waves and heavy rains had swept through the area.

The teens were believed to have been heading toward the Bahamas, about 75 miles southeast of Tequesta. They see it as a light to show the boys the way home.

“If the boys were hopefully to see a glimpse of that light, they would know that we would not ever give up on them”, Kristen Murgio said.

Using drift models, the search has inched northward each day to Savannah, 365 miles from their launch point. Nick Korniloff, Perry’s stepfather, said the family had rules about where Perry could take a boat without adult supervision.

“The water can be a very unpredictable place”. “He could go as far as the rocks and inlet”.

“A lot of kids here have grown up around the water and have always been on boats, so you get familiar with the area and you know the waters and you feel confident going out”, Caden said.

They headed out just as a storm was headed in.

Keith Judy is one such survivor.

His stepson grew up boating, fishing, and snorkeling in the ocean, Korniloff said. He said the group tied itself together with a rope and hung onto a floating cooler through the night. The Coast Guard says it’s even harder spotting the head of a distressed boater. “We fought off small sharks for a little while”.

“This isn’t something that he’s new at”, said Carly Black, the mother of Austin Stephanos, in an interview with television station WPBF.

The boat the boys were traveling in was found capsized near Cape Canaveral.

By Tuesday morning, the Coast Guard had scoured an area the size of West Virginia.

Former American football player Joe Namath, Ms Cohen’s neighbour, has offered a $100,000 (£64,100) reward for information on the missing boys.

But the search for the boys still remains a race against time.

He wouldn’t say if 14 is old enough for boaters to venture into the ocean on their own.

Cohen and Stephanos set off last week in a 19-foot, single-engine boat as part of an unsupervised fishing trip.

Vittone agreed, recalling his own struggle to pick people out of large bodies of water during his time in the Coast Guard.

The crew starts with the last known location of the boat in distress, and throws a life ring in the water. It’s unknown whether the boys are wearing life jackets, he said.