After getting a call Sunday about an unmanned gray dinghy drifting off the north coast of St. Thomas, the U.S. Coast Guard sent a helicopter and a small plane to scout the area.
“We initiated a search,” Coast Guard spokesman Ricardo Castrodad said Monday.
However, he said the Coast Guard hasn’t received any reports of overdue vessels, so how the dinghy began drifting remains unknown.
According to Castrodad, the dinghy was spotted on Inner Brass Island with some trailing lines extending from the boat. The island is located west of Magens Bay.
St. Thomas resident Joey Hamilton, who lives at East Caret Bay, spotted the helicopter.
“It was hovering over the eastern point of Outer Brass for five minutes, and for the next three hours it was going back and forth,” he said.
He said that he initially thought that what he heard was the mid-afternoon Delta flight departing from Cyril E. King Airport, but soon realized it was a helicopter.
