http://www.wptv.com/news/region-n-pa...o-be-announcedJUPITER, Fla. - Austin Stephanos parents say they are starting a foundation to increase boater safety and to require emergency beacons on all boats in the ocean off the coast of Florida.
"We have to teach them the right way to boat. And there are dangers out there and there are things out of our control and having EPIRBS is a great way to prevent things like this from happening," Austin's mother Carly Black said.
EPIRBS stands for Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon.
Through their new foundation called AustinBlu, Austin's parents will raise awareness, provide education, and make available the tools and technology to prevent near-shore and offshore boating accidents.
"The support has been so amazing that I feel like we need to give back. And the only way to give back at this point that I know is to do something in a positive way for everyone else," Austin's dad Blu Stephanos said.
The foundation is working with a Florida company called ACR Electronics that manufactures the beacons.
"A lot of newer boaters have no idea this technology exists, and older boaters are under the old assumption that this is thousands and thousands of dollars for your boat," Mikele Darcangelo with ACR Electronics said.
Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen went missing on July 24 after they were seen leaving the Jupiter Inlet to go fishing.
An exhaustive search for the boys lasted weeks and volunteers still continue searching for the missing teens up and down the East coast.
The Coast Guard called off their search after looking for the boys for a week. The families ended their search at sunset on Saturday, August 8.
"I don't know if we will ever stop looking. In a situation like this, there is no closure. We don't know what happened. We would love to have some answers but at this time there is no answers," Blu Stephanos said.
If you would like to follow the new foundation, you can "like" the AustinBlu Foundation on Facebook.
This is already a couple of weeks old & nothing seems to have come of it as yet
http://m.wsoctv.com/news/news/nation...r-missi/nnfgG/
New clues emerge in search for missing teen boaters
By Julius Whigham II
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Updated: 15 days ago
******
JUPITER —
Additional images uncovered from security cameras near the Jupiter Inlet area may provide clues regarding the disappearance of two Tequesta teens in July.
Richard Bowie, the director of the Maine-based search and rescue group DEEMI, said that a volunteer recently found the images, helping search groups to identify areas of interest near the Jupiter Inlet, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Last week, a dive team from the Peace River Search and Rescue group found items that may be connected to the boat of Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, two 14-year-old boys who went missing in July.
?The Post has covered the search from the beginning.*Here's our full coverage.
Bowie did not provide specifics about the recent dive effort, but the dive and recently-obtained images could help determine where the boys went missing, he said.
The teens set out from the Jupiter Inlet on July 24 for a fishing trip. The ocean waters off the inlet grew stormy that afternoon and the boys’ overturned 19-foot, single-engine boat was found two days later, about 65 nautical miles off the Ponce Inlet in Volusia County.
The boys’ disappearance prompted a massive search of coastal waters from Jupiter to the Carolinas by the U.S. Guard and various search and rescue groups.
The teens’ families called off privately-led search efforts on Aug. 8.
The boat was found. (again)
http://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/tr...oast/237636969
I'm a god mother fucker and it's judgment day.
http://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/tr...oast/237636969
TEQUESTA, Fla. —
The boat carrying Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos, the two Florida teens who were lost at sea last summer, and an iPhone belonging to one of the boys appear to have been found, according to the parents of one of the boys.
The boat is en route by sea to Florida and is scheduled to arrive May 16, according the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Perry and Austin went missing July 24, 2015, after leaving the Jupiter Inlet in a 19-foot Seacraft boat. The U.S. Coast Guard first located the boat off the coast of New Smyrna Beach days later, but it was gone when they went back to tow it days later. (See video.)
Now Pamela Cohen and Nick Korniloff, Perry’s parents, are saying a boat headed to Norway spotted the lost vessel 100 miles off the coast of Bermuda. The boat still had some personal items, including an iPhone that belonged to Austin, according to Cohen and Korniloff.
The Norwegian research vessel Edda Fjord was on its way back to Norway on March 18 about 100 miles off the coast of Bermuda when it found the capsized boat, said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss.
“It was floating in the middle of a shipping lane,” Doss said.
The crew lowered a small boat to examine the craft. They identified it was the teens' boat by the serial number on the engine, Doss said.
The Norway crew moved the research craft to the boat. They used a crane to bring the craft on board. They reported their findings to the U.S. Coast Guard.
“There was a sticker on board from a marine supply store in Palm Beach County,” said Doss.
All of the items have been turned over to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the couple said. FWC did not return calls for comment early Saturday.
The family is hoping that information on the iPhone or the boat will lead to more clues about where the boys were and what happened.
“This has been nine months now of pain and suffering. We’d like to have some sort of closure,” Korniloff said in a telephone interview with The Palm Beach Post Saturday morning.
Pamela Cohen said the family has received well-wishes from people worldwide.
“We just want to know the answers,” she said. “We just want to try to figure out what happened.”
The boat is expected to be brought back to South Florida by mid-May.
The Stephanos family did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
The search effort for the boys — both 14 when they went missing — spanned more than a week and covered the coastline from Jupiter to South Carolina. The private search, funded by donations to the families, was called off more than a week later.
The families have since moved their focus to helping others, promoting boating safety and raising money for charity.
I'm a god mother fucker and it's judgment day.
How does an iphone stay for months in a capsized boat?
Two Florida teens who vanished while fishing together at sea last summer may have sent the message, "We're f'd," to friends on Snapchat as weather conditions turned bad.
A trove of 128 pages of social media posts, investigative reports, cell phone tower records, interview notes and FBI emails released this week by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission paint the picture of an idyllic day on the water turned tragedy for two Tequesta teenagers and everyone who loved them.
Documents filed by various investigators show that the boys, 14-year-old Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos, woke up around 9 a.m. on the morning of July 24 at the home of Carly Black, Austin's mother. Perry had stayed the night with Austin and Black drove them to the home of Richard Kuntz, Austin's maternal grandfather, where the boat had been stored. The boys grabbed $100 that Kuntz had left for them on the counter, loaded the boat and headed out.
After a quick stop at the home of Diane Stephanos, Austin's paternal grandmother, to pick up ice, protein bars, fishing poles and gas cans, they set out toward Jupiter Inlet's Jib Club. They were $13 short for the fuel they needed, but no worries ? they could simply pay the difference the next time they stopped in, clerk Jeffrey Krizka reported.
With a promise to make good on the debt, the boys again hit the water at around 11 a.m. At 11:24 and 11:25, Black and Blu Stephanos, Austin's father, both received text messages from their son.
"What's up I'm checking in I'm just out here fishing."
Though the message is the final known communication between Austin and his parents, it may not have been the last the teenager sent that day. Multiple friends and classmates told investigators they received Instagram and Snapchat posts from Austin. One Snapchat posted under Austin's "austinfishkille" username featured four fishing rods lined up with a view of the water and the words, "Peace out Jup."
But another may yet prove an eerie clue that the boys knew they were in trouble. Several friends report receiving a Snapchat post with the words, "We're f'd," though it's unclear just when the post was sent. A December letter from Snapchat responding to a subpoena filed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission points out that governmental entity subpoenas are "not sufficient legal process to compel production of non-content records, such as Snap logs." Anything more than basic subscriber information would require a court order issued under the Stored Communications Act or a federal or state search warrant.
One missing persons report included in the released documents also listed a "Peace out Jupiter" post on Austin's Instagram account and shows that several friends said the boys told them they were planning to fish "far off shore" for dolphin.
Cell phone records, however, suggest that the boys may have stuck relatively close to inshore waters, at least during the early hours of their excursion. Emails between the FBI's Paul Bruno and David Magnuson reference records from AT&T showing cell tower hits from Austin's iPhone offshore at 11:25 a.m., but back inshore at 12:02 p.m.
"That's what the records reflect, but AT&T lists numerous caveats throughout their records as to the reliability of the GPS data, so it has to be viewed with an eye of caution," Special Agent Magnuson wrote. "This hit was at 12:02:43, and the hit just prior to that was at 12:02:20. Check out the capture, within 23 seconds, the phone was a mile away from the 12:02:43 hit. I must say the accuracy (better than 330 meters) is interesting."
At about 1:30 on the afternoon of the boys' disappearance, a storm whipped through the Jupiter area from the west and headed east offshore. Winds hit 20-40 miles per hour and lasted for just 20 minutes. Unfortunately, that may have been just long enough to prove devastating for the boys and their families. Records show that Austin's phone disconnected from the Internet at around 1:16 p.m. and there were no data entries recorded afterward.
<span style="font-size:13px;"> </span><a href="http://www.people.com/article/florida-teens-lost-at-sea-boat-iphone-found-months-later" style="color:#0000aa;font-size:13px;background-color:#92c0e0;">Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos</a> ? Provided by TIME Inc. Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos
No one has seen or heard from the boys since. But the March discovery of the boat, a 19-foot, 1978 Seacraft registered to Black, may yet provide clues as to the boys' fate.
Photos snapped by the crew of the Norwegian freighter that recovered the boat about 100 miles off Bermuda's coast were sent to the FFWCC and released earlier this week. Several show the boat's battery and ignition in the off position, leading to speculation that the boys may have been the victims of foul play.
"We do know for sure that boat was disabled intentionally because the battery switch, which is very difficult to get to, was in the off position," Guy Rubin, the attorney for Cohen's family, told WPBF. "That can't be maneuvered by the passage of time, the current, and other events. The key in the ignition was in the off position. If the storm came and capsized the boat, the battery switch and the key would not be in those positions."
But Captain Jimmy Hill, a longtime maritime industry professional and founder of the Southeast US Boat Show, tells PEOPLE there are a multitude of potential reasons for the battery and ignition to have been turned off. Topping the list is mechanical failure.
"One of the first things I would do is shut the battery off and save whatever energy I have, especially if I've already tried a few things and the battery is getting low," Hill explained. "One main reason is because the bilge pump works off that battery and it's the only way to pump out water that the boat takes on unexpectedly. The radio operates on electricity, too. There may be other systems on a boat, depending upon how it's wired, where that radio would be more valuable than anything else. So, the boys may have conscientiously shut off the battery to conserve electricity for that purpose."
As for the ignition, "If the boat had any type of mechanical failure, it would have been shut off, otherwise the alarm on the engine would have been driving them crazy if they left it on. Those particular items, by themselves without any other information, are not particularly shocking."
While personal effects including Austin's iPhone, the subject of a dispute between the Cohen and Stephanos families, have been returned, FFWCC officials await the arrival of the boat, purchased just a month before the ill-fated trip. It's expected to arrive at Florida's Port Everglades on May 16 and undergo an investigation.
"We hope that this will lead into something good and that they will have at least some information or details about what happened," said Captain H?vard Melv?r, who was the first aboard the Norwegian ship to spot the boys' boat. He adds that as the boat hung from a crane on the deck of the Edda Fjord, a bench beside it became something of a place of solace for his crewmembers. "It became a natural place to sit. It was treated with a lot of respect. I think most people were thinking about their loved ones and their own situations at home."
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/flo...zWb?li=BBnb7Kz
I read it again and again...Stephanos dad's name is "Black and Blu"???
Interesting to hear about the pilot and what he saw.
But pilot Bobby Smith said he saw one of the boys floating on debris and waving his hands over his head two days after they vanished
Smith lost sight of the boy and the Coast Guard could not find him later, according to new report released by investigators
Report also revealed the lead investigator was demoted halfway through the operation and has now left the search authority
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-revealed.html
The pilot said he saw The boys waving from debris. From the article it sounds like MANY people saw the boys and called the coast guards.
Ugh - that is horrible. It is also horrible to see the video footage of them leaving the marina on the boat...tiny boat that was not fit for the ocean.
I can't make anything put from the picture. I wonder why this was not reported before. Wonder if the family was aware. That is heartbreaking.
I wonder which boy it was...I am leaning on believing the pilot knew what he was seeing and that was a person. He was concerned enough to take the picture and get coordinates
Last edited by DrMichaelBaden; 04-30-2016 at 09:35 AM.
Originally posted by animosity:
Hmu next time, we'll have some soapy gins and then draw each other naked. Until we get kicked out.
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