Missing teens’ boat found capsized off Florida coast

Officials say at approximately 5 p.m. Friday, the Coast Guard Sector Miami received the report that Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos were aboard a 19-foot white vessel believed to be heading towards the Bahamas on a fishing trip. Namath held a press conference on Sunday to appeal for help finding the boys and ask for information from the public.

“We want everybody, once again, from Palm Beach all the way up the coast of Georgia … to get on down there and look for anything off”, Nick Korniloff, the stepfather of 14-year-old Perry Cohen, said on Monday.

Korniloff said Sunday they don’t know how much food and water the boys have, but insisted the boys “know what they’re doing out there”.

The day-and-night search is focused 60 to 70 miles off Jacksonville, north of where the boys’ capsized boat was found. Fedor said search conditions were good, but the situation is dire. Using models of speed and currents, Lehmann said the search area is now about 33,500 square miles, roughly the size of Maine. One may have had a cellphone, but Elg said there’s been no calls from it and authorities haven’t been able to track it. The Coast Guard found the boat Sunday 67 miles off the Cape Canaveral coast. Namath is the neighbor of Cohen, one of the missing boaters. Among the search vessels is the Navy’s USS Carney – a destroyer – several Coast Guard cutters, a helicopter and Sentry aircraft, according to the Coast Guard.

“Regardless of how experienced you are in the water, things can happen”, he said. “We’re all still completely faithful and hopeful that all these efforts will come with a positive result and bring our boys home to us”.

“This is still considered an active search and rescue case, and we maintain our perpetual optimism that we’re going to find somebody”, Lehmann told CNN Sunday.

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Over time, he said a parent’s goal should be to increase their child’s problem-solving skills on the water. Both boys are said to be capable, lifelong boaters.

People also assembled at the local Jupiter Christian School to pray for the missing boys.

A lot of prayers and a lot of crossed fingers in Jupiter Inlet as the search continues for the two missing boys.

“We’ve seen some really unusual things- where at the very last hour of the last day of a rescue, we found somebody”, said Officer Lehmann.