PORT ANGELES — The families of two Port Angeles men vowed to continue searching after the official U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard searches were called off at about noon Sunday.
“We will not stop looking,” Tiffany Bennett, Brooke Bennett’s wife, said Sunday.
“We are still hoping, but with every hour that goes by, well, we just don’t want to think the worst.”
The Coast Guard, U.S. Navy and Canadian Coast Guard had been searching for the two Port Angeles fishermen since about 11 p.m. Friday.
“The search has been suspended pending further developments,” said Mike Allen, a dispatcher for the U.S. Coast Guard Group/Air Station Port Angeles.
“We have had no sightings and no debris from the boat, so we simply have nowhere else to search unless we get some new information.”
Brooke Bennett, 39, and Rob Larsen, 42, left to fish off Ediz Hook at about 6 p.m. Friday.
Tammy Bennett, Brooke’s wife, said the Coast Guard was able to track a global positioning system location from a phone call her husband had made an hour later, at 7 p.m.
The GPS tracking indicated that he was at Freshwater Bay.
Family walking the beach
Tammy Bennett and her family were walking the beach Sunday between that area and Port Angeles, and friends had boats out searching for the two men. She and Brooke Bennett have four children and are raising a 17-month-old granddaughter.
As of Sunday evening, no trace was found of Brooke Bennett or Larsen, both of whom worked at Port Angeles Hardwood mill on Eclipse Industrial Parkway.
The pair left to fish for salmon in a 14-foot, blue-and-green skiff with a windshield.
“The Coast Guard searched a 700-mile radius in the water for them but couldn’t find anything,” Tiffany Bennett said, choking back tears.
Tammy Bennett said her family did not have a boat, but that many friends were searching the area between Freshwater Bay and Ediz Hook.
“There was one boat about 12 miles out that found a plastic blue tote, but they couldn’t retrieve it because of the choppiness of the water,” she said.
“But they are pretty sure that because of its location that it didn’t belong to them, but that was the only thing we have heard.
“We also aren’t sure about the GPS location, because we don’t know how that little boat could have gotten all the way here to Freshwater Bay from the Hook in just one hour.
“So the location might be slightly off, or we just don’t know.”
George Rixon, a longtime friend of Larsen’s, said he had been searching nonstop both on the water and walking the beach between Port Angeles and Freshwater Bay.
“This is a pretty sad deal,” he said during a telephone interview.
“I am really hoping we find something in the next couple of days,” he added, before hanging up to return to a boat to continue searching.
He said Larsen’s family and friends were joining him in the search.
Larsen’s parents could not be contacted Sunday.
He said Larsen was not married and did not have children.
Anyone with information on the men’s whereabouts is asked to phone the Port Angeles Coast Guard station at 360-417-5840.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
