THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 9, 1994 TAG: 9412090640
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
The Coast Guard found four people at sea late Thursday who were more than 30 hours overdue from a fishing trip that began in Wednesday's unseasonable warmth.
The four, all believed to be from Hampton Roads, were found ``cold and hungry,'' a Coast Guard spokesman said.
They all were still with the small pleasure craft they had set out in Wednesday morning, the Coast Guard said.
They were spotted just before 11 p.m. by the crew of a Coast Guard helicopter about a mile east of Virginia Beach in an area about five miles south of Sandbridge, not far from the North Carolina border.
A Coast Guard cutter was en route to the scene.
Chief Petty Officer Tom Gillespie of the 5th Coast Guard District Operations Center in Portsmouth said the boaters left Little Creek about 6 a.m. Wednesday and were to have returned about 5 p.m.
``They were going out to the Chesapeake Light and fish,'' Gillespie said. The light is near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. It was unclear why they were so long overdue and so far off course, but the presumption was that they had engine trouble, he said.
Gillespie said it was unclear who was aboard the craft. Authorities had the names of two men and a woman, but did not know anything about the fourth person.
The wife of one of the men, identified as L. McClain, 43, called the Coast Guard at 3:30 p.m. Thursday.
The vehicle and boat trailer the group had used was found where they left it at a boat slip.
Three small boats from Coast Guard stations around the region were joined by an 82-foot cutter from Little Creek and two aircraft - a helicopter and a plane - from Elizabeth City. They searched a 3,600-square-mile area Thursday afternoon, and the hunt continued into the night.
The search extended from Cape Charles south to Oregon Inlet and out about 40 miles. Coast Guardsmen used night-vision gear and infrared radar.
Weather conditions changed dramatically from the time the boaters left. Temperatures hit 78 in Norfolk on Wednesday, but the mercury had plunged by Thursday night.
At 11 p.m. Thursday, it was 4 degrees above freezing at the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. by CNB