The Coast Guard announced Friday that it has suspended the search for a ship that did not arrive as expected in Florida days earlier. The Coast Guard said there were about 20 people on board.
The Coast Guard said it received a report Tuesday that a 29-foot cabin Mako Cuddy Cabin, which had left Bimini, Bahamas on Monday, did not arrive as expected in Lake Worth, Florida. The agency said it searched approximately 17,000 square miles for 84 hours to no avail.
“Our thoughts and prayers are addressed to the families of the missing people,” said Captain Stephen V. Burdian, seventh district response chief. “I encourage anyone with information about the people on board to contact us as soon as possible.”
WPEC, a CBS subsidiary, reported that the Coast Guard encountered multiple difficulties during the search, including whitewater and ignorance of anyone’s identity on board or where exactly the ship was to arrive.
“The hardest part is that the longer it takes to find someone, the longer they can be adrift,” U.S. Coast Guard First Class Public Affairs NCO Jose Hernandez told WPEC on Wednesday.
In statements days before the cancellation of the search, Hernandez said the Coast Guard only suspends a search “once we have exhausted all the assets and information we have.”
“We want to find them and finding them is our top priority, but we can only be there for so long,” he said then.