Coast Guard Suspends Its Search for Boat With 7 Aboard : Missing: Father of one man continues to hold out hope after scouring of Channel Islands area turns up no survivors.

A search for seven men feared drowned after their fishing vessel sank off Santa Cruz Island was suspended Sunday without a clue as to what happened to the men, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

“If something else should occur that indicates we should resume our search, that’s what we’ll do,” Petty Officer Jay Bride said.

The Coast Guard would not classify the fishermen as drowning victims but were doubtful that the men could survive long in the 59-degree water.

“In this temperature of water, without any type of survival gear, a normal person can survive up to 12 hours,” Bride said.

The Coast Guard said it increased the search area Sunday to more than 2,800 square miles surrounding the Channel Islands looking for the 41-foot Vil Vana. The search began after the Coast Guard started receiving signals from an emergency transmitter about 6:30 p.m. Friday.

Searchers on Saturday recovered a life ring, an ice chest and identifiable fragments from the Vil Vana about 3 miles off the east coast of Anacapa Island, but turned up nothing more Sunday before suspending the search at 2:30 p.m.

The area where the Vil Vana was last reported--about a mile and a half north of Santa Cruz Island--is within a major shipping lane, leading to speculation that the trawler could have been rammed by a tanker or freighter.

A life raft believed to be aboard may be the only hope for the seven fisherman, Coast Guard Petty Officer David Sears said Sunday.

“We’re unsure on how big the life raft was,” he said. “We had a report that it was 6 to 10 feet, so we’re hoping they could all fit in there and that they made it to the island.”

The Vil Vana, an older wooden boat that was purchased in December by Sung Gyu Choi, 30, of Oxnard, was believed to be carrying its owner and six others when it left Ventura Harbor early Friday morning on a fishing trip.

Others on the vessel were crew members Dan Pelton, 33, who lives on a boat in Ventura Harbor and was signed on as captain of the Vil Vana; Benjamin Jordan, 24, of Ventura; Donnie Watkins, 41, who also lives on a houseboat in Ventura Harbor; John Kim of Glendale, who works for Choi; Kim’s 17-year-old nephew, William Choi, who is not related to Sang Choi, and an unidentified man, the Coast Guard said.

Authorities initially believed that six men were aboard the Vil Vana, but on Sunday they revised the number to seven.

Friends and relatives of the missing men held out hope Sunday that their loved ones would be found.

“My son’s awful resourceful,” said Don Watkins Sr., who lives in La Conchita. “Everything he ever did he excelled in. I envision him in this raft keeping everybody in stitches or they’ve landed on an island and he’s showing them all how to live.”

The elder Watkins credited the Coast Guard for doing what it could to locate the men.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “I know enough about boating to know that if the Coast Guard can’t pull it off, you can’t pull it off. If they can’t find anything, there’s nothing to find.”

But others on Sunday said that they feared the worst.

“It looks like they had an argument with a Honda Express (freighter) and lost,” said Chuck Connor, a lobster trapper and friend of Pelton’s.

Connor and a group of others were at Ventura Harbor Sunday monitoring marine radio transmissions for updates on the search.

“It’s a little dangerous to be out there now,” said rock cod fisherman Jack Morgan, another friend of Pelton’s who lives in the harbor. “We’d have left on a moment’s notice if we felt it would have done any good.”

High winds and intermittent patches of coastal fog made for dangerous conditions throughout the weekend and could have played a role in the boat’s disappearance, Morgan said.

“All the sudden you’re patched in and then it’s like this,” he said, waving his arm under clear blue skies. “I was out there Friday night and saw lots of patchy fog.”

The Coast Guard employed five aircraft and five cutters in making a pattern search for signs of the men or the boat before the decision to suspend the effort was made, Petty Officer Elizabeth Brannan said.

“If there was anything out there on the surface of the water we would see it, with as many assets as we have out there,” she said.

Watkins Sr. said his son and the others could have made it to shore on one of the Channel Islands.

“I’m hoping they found that inflatable and found themselves a little cove over there,” he said. “We’re going to keep the faith.”