Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Vanished off Virginia

Boaters missing since departing Maryland on Saturday...

This past Saturday, brothers Mike and Donald Bramlett, both in their early 50's, set off from Ocean City en route to Chincoteague, Virginia, aboard their 38 foot cruiser. They should have arrived by Saturday evening.





Unfortunately, they never made it to their destination, and have not yet been located. The wife of one of the men contacted the Coast Guard on Sunday morning and a massive search was initiated...



The Coast Guard searched approximately 20,400 overlapping square miles during a 32-hour period, using Coast Guard crews aboard an HC-130 Hercules and a MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C., an MH-65 Dolphin helicopter from Air Station Atlantic City, N.J., and a 45-foot Response Boat - Medium from Station Little Creek in Virgina Beach. Even the crew of the Navy ship USS Bunker Hill assisted in the search.

But after several days of no results, the 5th District of the US Coast Guard announced today that they have suspended their search for the two boaters. If you have any information about this incident, contact the Coast Guard at 757-482-8567.

###

4 comments:

  1. I'm sure there was a radio onboard; was there no word coming from the boat at any time? I know that area well and can't imagine how they could have had any problems en route unless there was something wrong with the boat itself. There are no pirates in the area that I know of! How sad that the CG found no evidence of the boat or the men.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know - no other details were released by the Coast Guard, and there wasn't much else in all the stories we found from newspapers in MD or VA. You've gotta hope the brothers decided to pull into a port somewhere and are safe and sound sipping some boat drinks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In fact, the most recent article (from abc 13 in Norfolk), has even less info. One new items in that article, however, is that one of the brothers is 61 y.o. as opposed to in his early 50's as we mentioned in our piece.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Having a SPOT device on board and simply pushing the OK button every 30 minutes would certainly narrow the search area if something was to go wrong.

    ReplyDelete