The U.S. Coast Guard on Sunday suspended its search for a man and his three children whose boat capsized in waters off the coast of Maine.
The Coast Guard’s New England command center received a radio distress call on Saturday at 10:30 a.m., in which a man claimed that the boat he and his children were on “flipped over.”
“Children are in the water…I’m going to try and get the kids on the top of the boat and lift them up if possible,” the man said on the call. “If not, we’re all going to just huddle in the water.”
The Coast Guard said the man reported that he and his children were in the water with life jackets, according to The Associated Press. He said their boat was 14 feet long and capsized 12 miles off of Kennebunkport.
The Coast Guard lost radio communications with the man but looked for his boat for 22 hours before suspending the search at 8 a.m. on Sunday, according to a news release.
Lt. Matthew Odom said searchers were unable to find any signs of the boat, debris or people, according to The Associated Press.
Search patterns covered approximately 1,523 square nautical miles, according to Coast Guard.
“We utilized every resource at our disposal and applied an extraordinary amount of search effort to locate these boaters,” said Cdr. James McLay, Search and Rescue Mission Coordinator at Sector Northern New England. “If there was anyone in distress we gave them the best possible chance for rescue.”