Oct. 1st I received a message from a friend of the family of one of two missing fisherman near Grand Haven, Michigan on Lake Michigan. He indicated that two missing fisherman, Aaron Juarez and Chris Thode, their two dogs and boat, had been missing since Sept. 26th and the Coast Guard have called of their search. We started making arrangements and started out for the seven hour drive to Grand Haven Michigan.
We arrived around midnight Saturday. We met with my contacts and family members at a boat launch Sunday morning to get what info they had.
The coast guard had gathered cell phone records that would send us out seven miles off shore, in about 200’ of water. With nothing else to go on we decided to work that area.
Later that day we located an object that appeared to be a small boat. Now to pin point this item in 200’ of water when we have 600’ of cable out from our sonar, becomes a real challenge. We continued to work the sonar on Monday to better pin-point our object of interest. We had been in contact with the Ottowa County Sheriff’s Dept. whom has a tow-type sonar and ROV (remote operated vehicle) which also has sonar. They came out on Tue and ran into problems with their camera. On Tue. we also had mechanical problems and lost most of the day but got up and running later in the day. We are still working on getting an ROV down to this to see if the item is what we are looking for. But working at this depth and distance from shore has proven to be more difficult than one can imagine. The weather has been good to us and the support from the locals has been great.