Missing teens defined salt life in Florida

mypalmbeachpost.com ^ | 8-1-15 | John Pacenti

[FlJoePa]

JUPITER —

From Juno Beach to Tequesta, boys like Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen congregate wherever they can get a pole in the water.

They pepper the turquoise waves aboard boats. They talk incessantly about what’s biting: snook, kingfish, wahoo.

These are pier rats, not mall rats — known for lounging and canoodling on a sand bar accessible only by water and within the gaze of the iconic sunburnt Jupiter Lighthouse. They are obsessed about the newest fishing lures rather than video games, music or sports.

“They are more fish than boy,” said Marvin Steiding, a charter boat captain at the Jupiter Inlet Marina who knows the type well.

“These boys grow up around the ocean. When they aren’t in school, they are on the water.”

Steiding calls it “good clean fun.” It’s a fairytale upbringing, a bit of sun-drenched innocence where boys forge fast friendships and families grow closer — all around the hook, leader and pole.

This is where the glitz of the South Florida metropolis fades. You don’t see many yachts at the marinas. Oh, there’s money here to be sure. Children, like Stephanos, go to private schools and have their own boats.

But it’s more about the fish than the flash.

And so it is that for many teenagers, like it is for Perry and Austin, the mangrove-lined tributaries and ocean is their playground and their passion.

And now these young men appear lost to the sea.

The Coast Guard called off the exhausting search Friday at sunset — though private boats will still scour the ocean.

In a story that captured the nation, the best friends motored their 19-foot single-engine fishing boat into a vicious storm over the Atlantic on the afternoon of July 24. The Coast Guard discovered the capsized boat on Sunday in the Gulf Stream just south of Daytona Beach.

Hope was that the boys — known for their seamanship — had fashioned a makeshift raft from an engine cover and a cooler buoyed hopes of their families who saturated the media. Former football star Joe Namath, a friend of the Stephanos family and a Tequesta resident, held a news conference and a $100,000 award was offered for their rescue. Country music star Alan Jackson, who has Jupiter ties, took to Twitter.

The mothers took to the airwaves, their tragedy the nightmare of every parent with a teenager. Their grief, their refusal to give up, played out in the spotlight from the Today Show to gossipy websites. Missing Florida teens: Full coverage

But after a Coast Guard searched waters vaster than the state of Maine, there was no sign of the teens and, before the weekend, reality had set in. They were gone. The families said the boys were supposed to stick to the Loxahatchee River because Cohen wasn’t allowed on the ocean unsupervised. Friends, though, said the two had used the app popular with their age group, Snapchat, to brag that they were going to the Bahamas.

And the parents took heat for allowing the boys on the water by themselves, but Steiding said those are non-boaters talking. There is no law prohibiting kids from captaining their own boat. “It’s not like when we were kids. Every kid has their own boat,” he said. “They are used to trips to the Bahamas. It’s like taking a car ride down to Palm Beach.”

Paula Garcia, 18, who works at the U Tiki Beach, the restaurant that pumps endless reggae music out toward the marina, echoed the sentiment

“Usually the only thing to do around here is to go the beach or go on the boat, you know,” said the 18-year-0ld who knows the Stephanos family.

“You know how everyone is saying that they shouldn’t be on the boat when they are so young, but they’ve been doing it forever,” she said. “It’s just the thunderstorm came out of nowhere.”

At Jupiter Christian School, where Stephanos attended, teachers said after at a prayer vigil that the child was simply obsessed about fishing. In art class, he drew nothing but boats and ocean life. Faith played a big role in Stephanos’ life and the vigil brought out more than 200 people who linked hands and prayed for the boys.

“You can see for yourself that we are a very close-knit community and we needed each other tonight and we needed to pray,” said Emily Walsh, an adult who attended the vigil.

And now with this tragedy for many of the boys’ peers, teetering on the threshold of adulthood, the emotions are overwhelming. At one prayer service, it was all braces and tears. The teens seemed connected in small groups at the hip, trying to make sense of it all.

Malia Bowman knew the towheaded Cohen as a classmate and he would brag to her about the fish he had caught. “Perry would talk about it all the time,” she said. “It’s just a really sad situation.”

Out on the pier and the marina, the missing boys were the main topic of conversation. Many had fished with the boys at one time or another.

Tanner Stephanos, a cousin, was out on Juno Beach skim boarding on Tuesday. Striking a very Sean Spicoli-like vibe with long sun-bleached locks, the 17-year-old recalled how he played hide-and-seek with Austin when he was younger. Salt still coated his skin from a day in the ocean.

“We are a very active people,” Tanner Stephanos said. “Austin has been around boats since he was in diapers. He was the first kid I ever fished with.”

The family of Carly Black, Austin’s mom, owns Grand Slam Tackle in Jupiter. While Cohen was supposed to stay within the confines of the river, Stephanos was allowed on the ocean with his boat and was implicitly trusted by his parents.

“His father Blu and I, we both grew up on the water and obviously when we met, of course, we were going to have children that loved being on the water,” she said. “He’s a water baby. It’s in his blood.”

Austin wasn’t known for his school smarts but for his quick-thinking on the water. His mother called him a “modern day MacGyver.”

“He researches and knows so much about the things he loves. He loves fishing. He loves being on the boat,” she said.

“He can be on Survivor and win the whole thing.”

Head to the Jupiter Beach Park Pier and you can find Austins and Perrys all over. At the bait shack, three of their fellow young anglers take a break from catching snook, looking at their smart phones at lures they want to buy. Kevin Estevez, Skyler Sparks and Ricky Denti fill their Instagram accounts with pictures of fish they caught.

Meg Robinson, who works at the pier shop that sells T-shirts with slogans that say “Fight Stress With Grouper Therapy.” She calls the wharf rats her “boys.”

“They’re the regulars. They come out here every day,” she said. “It’s a Florida way of life especially here in this area of Jupiter.”

The threesome about to be sophomores in high school could have been forged in a Sunshine State version of the buddy movie Stand by Me. They find the mall scene too crowded and “annoying” but sometimes forget that not all of their peers are as passionate about their sport.

“We start talking about fishing to them and they are like, ‘What are you talking about,’ ” said Sparks, who knew Stephanos.

Estevez said Stephanos and Cohen no longer look like the kids in the photo, that they matured and are known for being strong young men.

But Estevez said he would never go out on the ocean alone without an adult, calling it “sketchy” in case an emergency comes up.

But teenagers are hard-wired to take risks.

Sparks added, “I went offshore on my boat alone before, but it was scary. It was fun though. I did catch a kingfish on a dead sardine.”

[Bryanw92]

>>Yeah, either all that or an unexpected bad storm came up.

...and sucked two 14 year old boys out of their home and out to sea?

[antidisestablishment]

Discipline them at an early age and you don’t need to keep them under lock and key as teenagers.

I agree, but they still can get into trouble even then. They don't have the maturity to understand the dangers of their lack of experience. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired. Goodnight, all.

[WVKayaker]

Your post does not compute with the facts.

At 14, every Saturday morning, My friend and I would get into our Sunfish sailboats about dawn, and head out into the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Fear. We sailed until 10 or 11, with trot lines (fishing lines for the ignorant) trailing behind the boats, and our cockpits filling with King and Spanish Mackerel.Anything else went back into the sea.

We would return to shore and sell our fish to local restaurants we had as regular customers. I was a rich kid!

But, at times, we would be so far offshore in those 13 foot overgrown surfboards with sails, that we could not even see the water towers on Wrightsville Beach (NC).

At 14, I had been sailing for more than 10 years SOLO! At 12, I was teaching some Marines at Guantanamo how to sail, and was the youngest person allowed to sail the Special Services Cape Cods! The rules said 16 or older, but an exception was made when I demonstrated my abilities to the Chief!

It's so easy to sit in front of a computer and pontificate, but sometimes it only exposes ignorance on a subject.