The Coast Guard says it has done all it could to find teen boaters Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos.
But their families say a private hunt for the 14-year-olds has only just begun.
The Coast Guard’s weeklong search for the two Florida teens, who vanished at sea on July 24, will stop at sunset Friday, after an extensive coastal search that extended from southern Florida to North Carolina, Capt. Mark Fedor told reporters in Miami.
Searchers found the teens’ boat capsized on Sunday dozens of miles off Florida’s Atlantic coast, well north of Jupiter, the community they left two days earlier.
“We believe we reached the limit of our effective search and rescue efforts,” Fedor said Friday.
The teens’ families, however, say a private search for Perry and Austin will continue, drawing on a GoFundMe campaign that has raised more than $280,000 to pay to fly private aircraft and buy boat fuel.
“Our families are committed to continue the search and rescue efforts of our boys with the aid of volunteer pilots and aircraft,” the families said in a joint statement Friday.
“We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to our families, friends, neighbors, colleagues, community, along with strangers from around the globe for your prayers and thoughts as well as all that have contributed to the Perry and Austin Rescue Fund to ensure the boys’ safe return,” the statement reads.
Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen left Jupiter in a 19-foot, single-engine vessel on July 24.
About the same time the boys were heading out to sea, the National Weather Service was posting special marine warnings telling boaters to seek shelter.
Later that day, when one of the boys’ grandmothers didn’t hear from them, she reported them missing.
The teens’ boat was found Sunday, capsized 67 nautical miles (about 77 miles, or 124 kilometers) off Florida’s Ponce de Leon Inlet.
One life jacket was found in the water, but there was no sign of the boys. It’s unknown whether the boys were wearing life jackets.
Though the boys are young, they were legally operating the boat. Florida regulations say a person must be at least 14 to operate a watercraft.
People in southeastern Florida rallied around the teens’ relatives during the search, including football great Joe Namath, a neighbor of the boys’ families. Hundreds of people attended a vigil for the teens Tuesday at the beach in Stuart, a short distance from Jupiter Inlet.