There is a lot of news material on the Web on this. They were spotted by a US Coast Guard HC-130 search plane flying out of US Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Florida, and picked up by an American UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter 20 minutes later.

Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater is the USCG's largest air station, and operates six HC-130Hs. The aircraft is an ideal platform for long range Search and Rescue, with over 14 hours of airborne endurance and large scanner windows built into the airframe side. (Wikipedia)

Also, the HC-130H has a nice chin turrent camera with color and near-infrared capability, judging by the video.

"The group tried to flag down several passing ships to no avail." While a PLB would have been best, even a signal mirror could have been a great help, here.

The US Coast Guard posted video from the search plane here - seems to be near-infrared and color, and it looks like the video annotation gives you the latitude, longitude, bearing and time - I wonder if the airspeed and altitude are on there? It also includes footage of the helicopter hovering near the boat, which I haven't seen in any of the news videos.

View raw USCG footage here - can be downloaded in higher resolution.



Here's one of (many) YouTube clips, but the raw USCG footage link above is much better.



Edited by rafowell (07/06/13 02:12 AM)
Edit Reason: More links
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A signal mirror should backup a radio distress signal, like a 406 MHz PLB (ACR PLB) (Ocean Signal PLB)