Boat of missing Florida teens disappears

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. -- The 19-foot boat that two missing teens Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen from South Florida were operating when they were last seen has now also disappeared, reports CBS Orlando.

The boat was originally found more than a week ago in the Atlantic Ocean, a little more than 60 miles off the Volusia coast.

CBS Orlando reports that a marine salvage company hired by the Coast Guard to bring the boat back to shore couldn't find the vessel. The boat was discovered capsized on July 26.

Coast Guard spokesman Anthony Soto said Monday that the boat had been left unsecured and the agency has no plans to look for it.

Soto said the boat wasn't brought to shore earlier because officials were focused on search efforts for the boys instead.

After hundreds of rescue workers fanned out across a massive swath of the Atlantic for a full week, the Coast Guard's search for the two teenage fishermen ended Friday, a heart-rending decision for families so convinced the boys could be alive they're pressing on with their own hunt.

The agency said it ended the search at sunset, as it had announced earlier in the day. The Coast Guard searched waters from South Florida up through South Carolina without success.

The boys took Austin's 19-foot boat on what their families said was expected to be a fishing trip within the nearby Loxahatchee River and Intracoastal Waterway, where they were allowed to cruise without supervision on July 24. The boys fueled up at a local marina around 1:30 p.m. and set off, and later calls to Austin's cellphone went unanswered. When a line of summer storms moved through and the boys still couldn't be reached, police were called and the Coast Guard search began.

The boys grew up on the water, constantly boated and fished, worked at a tackle shop together and immersed themselves in life on the ocean. Their families said they could swim before they could walk. They clung to faith in their boys' knowledge of the sea, even speculating they might have fashioned a raft and spear to keep them afloat and fed while adrift.

The Coast Guard had dispatched crews night and day to scan the Atlantic for signs of the boys. They chased repeated reports of objects sighted in the water, and at times had the help of the Navy and other local agencies. But after the boys' boat was found overturned Sunday, no useful clues turned up.

The families had held out hope that items believed to have been on the boat, including a large cooler, might be spotted, or that the teens might even have clung to something buoyant in their struggle to stay alive. Even as hope dimmed, experts on survival said finding the teens alive was still possible.

The Coast Guard said it would keep on searching until officials no longer thought the boys could be rescued.

Capt. Mark Fedor called the decision to suspend the search "excruciating and gut-wrenching." He suggested what long had been feared by observers -- that the boys had surpassed any reasonable period of survivability -- with his offering of "heartfelt condolences."

"I know no statistics will ease the pain," he said in recounting the seven-day, nearly 50,000-square-nautical-mile search. "We were desperate to find Austin and Perry."

With volunteers ready to keep searching all along the coastline and about $340,000 in search-fund donations by Friday evening, the families promised to keep looking for their sons.

Nick Korniloff, the stepfather of Perry, addressed a horde of media outside his home on a quiet street in Tequesta, Florida, saying air searches led by private pilots would go on alongside new efforts led by former members of the military and others with special training.

"We know there's a window here and we think there's an opportunity," he said, "and we will do everything we can to bring these boys home."

Those who have met with the families believe the private search could go on at least for weeks.