Sailboat AIS blackout ‘highly unusual’ night wife vanished in Bahamas: expert
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
According to data obtained by Fox News Digital, Brian Hooker’s sailboat stopped providing location information the night his wife, Lynette Hooker, disappeared in the Bahamas.
After leaving shore in Hope Town, Bahamas, around 7:30 p.m. on April 4, Brian Hooker told authorities that rough waters caused his wife to fall off the boat. Brian Hooker rowed ashore and arrived at Marsh Harbor around 4 a.m. on April 5, according to authorities.
The couple were returning to their sailboat Soulmate, their full-time home in retirement, when Lynette fell overboard. According to their social media pages, they frequently sail to the USA and the Caribbean.
FOLLOW THE FOX TRUE CRIME SQUAD ON X
Family members said Brian and Lynette Hooker had been married for about 25 years. (Sailing Whores/YouTube and Instagram)
Data obtained by Fox News Digital through marine tracking company VesselFinder shows that Soulmate’s Automatic Identification System (AIS), which broadcasts a ship’s identity, speed and location, went dark at 9.29pm on April 4 and did not resume until 8.40am the next morning – an outage of more than 11 hours.
AMERICAN WOMAN MISSING AFTER SAYING HER HUSBAND FALLED AND WAS DRIVEN OVERWHERE ON A BOAT TRIP TO THE BAHAMAS: POLICE
According to Vesselfinder’s data, Soulmate stopped transmitting AIS data for more than 11 hours. (Fox News)
Brian Hooker’s friend, Blaine Stevenson, previously told Fox News Digital that Brian returned to his sailboat on April 5 after searching for about three or four hours with rescuers and remained there for about 24 hours.
SIGN UP TO RECEIVE THE TRUE CRIME NEWSLETTER
Kenneth Engerrand, an assistant professor of maritime law at the University of Houston Law Center and shareholder of the Brown Sims law firm, told Fox News Digital that the timing of the AIS blackout was “pretty unusual.”
“There are ways to stop the transmission. Catastrophic power outages, things like that. In a collision, the mechanism goes to the bottom of the ocean or shuts down. It doesn’t just go off and then come back on,” Engerrand said.
SEND US A TIP HERE
Brian Hooker leaves the Central Police Station in Freeport, Bahamas, on April 13, 2026, after being released from custody. He was questioned about the disappearance of his wife, Lynette Hooker, who he said fell overboard from a boat earlier this month. (Matthew Symons for Fox News Digital)
“If [the AIS] If it stopped completely and never came back, you’d assume there was some kind of catastrophic failure in the system. “However, when it turns off and turns back on a few hours later, this is an act of shutting down or disabling the system,” he added.
Specifically, between 10 and 13 April, there were three more instances where the AIS did not transmit data.
LISTEN TO THE NEW ‘CRIME AND JUSTICE WITH DONNA ROTUNNO’ PODCAST
U.S. Coast Guard investigators search for the boat Soulmate, which docked at their station in Fort Pierce, Fla., on May 13, 2026. The ship belongs to Brian Hooker and his missing wife, Lynette Hooker, and was brought back to the United States from the Bahamas by the Coast Guard. (Fox News Digital)
Brian Hooker has not been charged with a crime. He was detained by Bahamian police for five days after his wife disappeared, but was not charged.
COAST GUARD PUBLISHED NEW PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE SAIL CAPTURED IN THE CASE OF MISSING AMERICAN MISSING IN THE BAHAMAS
Brian and Lynette Hooker’s sailboat, Soulmate, was seized between May 8 and 10, a source familiar with the investigation told Fox News Digital. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, the Soulmate was seized 40 nautical miles off the coast of Melbourne, Florida.
DO YOU LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? FIND MORE IN TRUE CRIME CENTER
The seizure was part of a “complex surveillance and interdiction operation,” the Coast Guard said in a press release. The sailboat was taken to Coast Guard Station Fort Pierce for evaluation of potential evidence.
Brian Hooker’s Michigan-based lawyer previously asked Americans to give him the benefit of the doubt in an interview with ABC News.
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD FOX NEWS APPLICATION
“I would ask the audience to treat him the way you would want to be treated, to give him the benefit of the doubt and to consider that not all of us, or you, handle things differently, given your own relationships, the way you talk to each other,” Crystal Marie Hauser said.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Hauser for comment.
