To your question, because the boat was taking on water whenever they tried to start it up so the coast guard had to sink it. Funny how that is not mentioned in this article.
This couple are typical liberal thinkers. When the consequences of your poorly thought out actions come to bite you in the butt.... blame someone else.
The fact that the news report left that out makes me wonder what else they left out in order to make the story better for the idiot family. If they didn't bother to update their billing credit card and are blaming the phone company for that, I hope the company crushes them and gets lawyer fees from them.