Reuters: U.S.: Coast Guard searching for four missing in sailboat off California

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Coast Guard searching for four missing in sailboat off California Feb 25th 2013, 19:33 By Ronnie Cohen SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Feb 25, 2013 1:52pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Coast Guard was searching the waters off Northern California on Monday for two adults and two children believed missing after they sent a distress call that their sailboat was in trouble. The 29-foot craft was in waters south of San Francisco when a crew member first radioed late Sunday afternoon that the vessel was sinking, the Coast Guard said. A little more than an hour later, the vessel operator reported that the four people aboard the boat - a man, a woman, their 4-year-old son and his cousin, also under age 8 - were abandoning the craft, and the Coast Guard lost radio communications with them. The Coast Guard said in a statement late on Sunday that the four people from the missing vessel, possibly named the Charmblow, might have made it into a makeshift life raft. But their fate remained uncertain. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the boat operator told the Coast Guard that the sailors planned to use a life raft fashioned out of a cooler and a life-preserver ring as a flotation device until they could be rescued from the frigid water. The boat had no life raft or electronic-positioning beacon, and it was unclear whether the passengers were wearing life vests, according to the Chronicle. The Coast Guard initially said the vessel was sinking off Pillar Point, at the northern end of Half Moon Bay south of San Francisco, but later reassessed the location south to near Monterey, the Chronicle said. Coast Guard officials did not immediately respond to queries about the status of the search on Monday morning. As of Sunday night, aircraft and sea vessels had already conducted several searches of the area without success, and additional Coast Guard resources were to join in the operation, the agency had said. (Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Pravin Char, Cynthia Johnston and Richard Chang) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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