JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Thanksgiving marks 24 hours since the search was officially suspended for two mariners whose boat was found capsized 65 miles off the coast of Brunswick, Georgia.
The Coast Guard said the name of the boat that was found capsized was the "Qori Inti" and was on its way to St. Augustine from Connecticut. While the 50 foot catamaran was found, the two men aboard the boat, David Wickenden and Charles Andrade, are still missing. However, the search has been suspended.
For more than 70 hours, eight different crew searched more than 9,000 square miles of open ocean for the missing boaters who were aboard the Qori Inti before it capsized. The search involved multiple vessels including an MH65 Dolphin helicopter out of Coast Guard Air Station Savannah as well as Coast Guard Cutter Kingfisher. The area that was searched is roughly the size of the state of Vermont.
The Coast Guard tells First Coast News that an EPIRB was not activated when the Qori Inti capsized. An EPIRB is an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon and it can save your life during an emergency at sea.
"When the boat goes down and the EPIRB gets wet it deploys automatically," said West Marine employee Nels Gyland. "It has a hydrostatic release and it turns itself on,"
Gyland owes his life to an EPIRB. First Coast News interviewed Gyland for a different story about missing boaters when he described how he was rescued off the coast of Puerto Rico. Gyland said an EPIRB deployed after the boat he was on started to go down.
"Within 10 seconds it is transmitting to a satellite above you giving your GPS coordinates and sending them to whatever local search and rescue group is available," said Gyland.
There are also manual EPIRBs that would need to be activated by someone on the boat during an emergency situation.
The Coast Guard tells First Coast News that unless there is further development, the search for David Wickenden and Charles Andrade will remain suspended.