Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Rescuers Hold Out Hope for Missing Jewish Boater

The search for two 14-year-old boys from South Florida who disappeared while on a fishing trip in the Atlantic Ocean entered a seventh day on Thursday amid questions about whether the U.S. Coast Guard would soon consider ending the operation.

“This is 100 percent still a search and rescue. It’s not going to be a recovery just yet,” said Petty Officer Jon-Paul Rios.

Coast Guard Captain Mark Fedor visited the families of Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen on Wednesday to refute an erroneous news report that the search for the boys was being called off. The families have been given daily updates by telephone since Friday, Rios said.

Authorities had searched 40,000 square nautical miles, an area about the size of Arkansas or North Carolina, by Wednesday evening but found no sign of the boys.

The search has been extended to Charleston, South Carolina, 500 miles north and 100 miles out to sea from Jupiter, Florida, where the teens launched their boat on Friday afternoon.

The last confirmed sighting of Stephanos and Cohen, who were fishing buddies and neighbors in Palm Beach County, Florida, occurred on Friday afternoon as they were buying fuel in Jupiter.

Jupiter commercial fisherman Jim Dulin told the Palm Beach Post that he was surprised on Friday afternoon to see what he now suspects was the boys’ boat heading out to sea at the same time other boats were heading in the opposite direction for safety as a visible line of thunderstorms approached.

Their overturned 19-foot boat was found two days later 180 miles north of Jupiter. One life vest was found by the boat.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.