BRUNSWICK, Ga. — The search for three men from Brunswick who never returned from a fishing trip will continue Thursday. The Coast Guard planned to end the search at sunset Wednesday, but family members of the men are begging for the Coast Guard to search further north.
As of Wednesday, the Coast Guard says they have searched more than 88,000 square nautical miles from North Carolina to St. Augustine.
"With the US Coast Guard, both the U.S. Navy and Georgia Department of Natural Resources, with units from Air Station Elizabeth City, Air Station Savannah, Air Station Miami, and Clearwater. We've also had Coast Guard patrol boats from Savannah and Jacksonville, as well as Coast Guard stations from Georgia," U.S. Coast Guard Commander Preston Hide said.
The Coast Guard says it hasn't found any sign of the boat or a debris field so far.
Dalton Conway, Caleb Wilkinson and Tyler Barlow left for a fishing trip aboard a 31-foot boat named the 'Carol Ann' on October 14th from Brunswick. They were supposed to return from their fishing trip on October 18th but never returned.
"It is like the boat just completely vanished, which is impossible," Tyler Barlow's dad, Chris Barlow said. "Every other fishing trip that they've been on, they've had continuous contact with Josh Morgan (the boat's owner). There's literally been no communication with him since they left on Saturday."
The Coast Guard was notified the men didn't return by the boat's owner on October 20th.
On Wednesday, family members of the three men had a meeting with the Coast Guard.
Tyler Barlow's dad, Chris Barlow says the boat's Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) which is used as a communication device for search and rescue crews to help find someone in distress is considered a 'Class 2' and has to be manually deployed. Barlow says it was originally thought the device automatically turned on if it made contact with water.
"It's locked into a magnetic holder and it doesn't matter if the boat goes down, its basically useless unless one of them goes over to the bracket, manually pulls it out, and either puts it in the water or sets it off. So if there were any kind of catastrophic problem with the boat, and they had to immediately deploy the life raft, chances are, they would not have set that off," Barlow said.
The Coast Guard says the EPIRB it has not yet been activated.
"We are focused on the search and rescue efforts of this case but, we do have investigators that will be looking at all aspects of of why this EPIRB is not going off," Hide said.
Barlow says they also found out the raft on board the boat was equipped with a few days of rations of food, water, medical supplies, flares. and smoke grenades.
"It is a self deploying life raft. It's actually tethered to the boat," Barlow said. "The raft itself has an insulated floor in it so it kind of gives them some shielding from the temperature of the water."
Barlow says the men could have gotten caught in bad weather at some point. On Saturday, October 21st, a fisherman reported to the Coast Guard that they spotted distress flares about 240 nautical miles off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina.
"They lowered their sails and actually turned towards the flares searched for approximately four hours," Barlow said.
"The captain of that vessel knew that was a distress call. They risked their lives," Tyler Barlow's mom Kim Jones added.
Barlow says the Coast Guard sent a plane that flew over the area for about 30 minutes and then returned.
The Coast Guard told First Coast News Wednesday it linked the 'flare' sightings to the SpaceX rocket launch, but Jones says the families are begging the Coast Guard to search a new grid pattern based on the coordinates documented of that area by the fisherman.
"(The Coast Guard) agreed to go ahead and actually start a new search pattern based on those coordinates. In the meeting they said that would basically put them to the northern part of North Carolina into Virginia and possibly even further north than that," Barlow said.
Jones says she trusts the Coast Guard and its search efforts.
"I hope they're just looking at every single avenue and scenario. That's what we hope they're doing right now," Jones said.
Barlow and Jones say the families of all three men have been communicating with each other. They say local fisherman have also conducted their own searches.