A 22-year-old Rhode Island man has been found alive after more than a week lost at sea in an inflatable life raft, the U.S. Coast Guard has confirmed.
A spokesman for the Coast Guard said Nathan Carman was spotted about 100 nautical miles offshore Massachusetts by a passing commercial freighter. He was in relatively good condition when rescued, the spokesman said.
The man’s mother, 54-year-old Linda Carman, is still missing.
Nathan and his mother were reported missing last Sunday, September 18, after failing to return from an offshore fishing trip in a 31-foot center console boat named Chicken Pox. They departed Ram’s Point Marina in Point Judith, Rhode Island that Saturday evening.
The Coast Guard suspended the search on Friday after searching six days and 62,000 square nautical miles of ocean, an area larger than the state of Georgia, from south of Block Island to the Canyons off New York.
Media reports say the man said his boat sank on September 18. A search for his mother was not expected to be resumed.
Involved in the search were the Coast Guard cutters Bonito, Campbell, and Sitkinak, two Coast Guard helicopters and two search aircraft, as well as other agencies and personnel.