Global Courant 2023-04-16 09:46:29
SAN DIEGO — A search is underway for three Americans who were due to leave for the United States from Mazatlán, Mexico, and have not been seen or heard from in more than 10 days.
Kerry O’Brien, Frank O’Brien and William Gross reportedly left on April 4 and planned to make a provisioning stop at Cabo San Lucas on April 6, about 200 nautical miles across the Sea of Cortez, before heading to San Diego, according to the US Coast Guard.
“However, there was no record of their arrival in Cabo San Lucas or any report on their location,” the Coast Guard said in a statement Friday.
Gross’s daughter, Melissa Spicuzza, said the O’Briens invited her father to sail with them and he jumped at the chance because he likes being on the water, according to NBC San Diego. She said her father lives on a boat in San Diego Bay.
Each missing American, Spicuzza said, has decades of sailing experience, and the O’Briens have Coast Guard captain’s licenses, which are required for fare-paying passenger travel.
“I just want my dad, my dad and the O’Briens to roll back in and say, ‘What’s going on guys?'” she told the station.
The Mexican Navy led the search for the three and the Coast Guard helped, the US military branch said.
Searchers have contacted marinas in Baja, Mexico, but no one has reported seeing the trio’s boat, a LaFitte model 44 sailing yacht, the Coast Guard said.
Urgent marine broadcasts via VHF radio have so far yielded no reports of the sailors or the 14-meter vessel, the Ocean Bound, it said.
The model was sold in the 1970s and 1980s by LaFitte Yachts Inc. from Newport Beach. The company said it was designed by noted yacht designer Robert Perry as “the ultimate cruising yacht hull,” according to marketing materials of the time.
The National Weather Service reported that the seas along the Baja coast contained waves as high as 10 feet on Saturday.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of the trio or the ship is asked to contact the Coast Guard.
