Sailboat AIS blacked out at night ‘very unusual’ woman disappears in Bahamas: expert
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Brian Hooker’s sailboat stopped moving the night his wife, Lynette Hooker, disappeared in the Bahamas, according to information obtained by Fox News Digital.
After leaving Hope Town Beach in the Bahamas around 7:30pm on April 4, Brian Hooker told authorities that rough water caused his wife to fall from their boat. Brian Hooker paddled to shore and arrived in Marsh Harbor around 4 a.m. on April 5, according to authorities.
The couple were returning to their yacht Soulmate, their lifelong retirement home, when Lynette fell overboard. They often sail in the US and the Caribbean, according to their social media pages.
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Brian and Lynette Hooker have been married for nearly 25 years, family members said. (Sailing Hookers/YouTube and Instagram)
Data obtained by Fox News Digital through the marine tracking company VesselFinder shows Soulmate’s Automatic Identification System (AIS), which broadcasts the vessel’s identification, speed and position, went black at 9:29 pm on April 4 and did not restart until 8:40 am the next day, a blackout of more than 11 hours.
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Soulmate stopped transmitting AIS data for more than 11 hours, according to data from Vesselfinder. (Fox Stories)
Blaine Stevenson, a friend of Brian Hooker, previously told Fox News Digital that after spending about three or four hours searching with rescue officials on April 5, Brian returned to his boat and stayed there for about 24 hours.
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Kenneth Engerrand, a professor of maritime law at the University of Houston Law Center and a shareholder in the law firm Brown Sims, told Fox News Digital that the timing of AIS’s death is “very unusual.”
“There are ways to stop the transfer. Catastrophic power failure, things like that. The machine when it crashes goes to the bottom of the ocean, something like that, or it’s turned off. “It doesn’t just come back,” Engerrand said.
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Brian Hooker leaves the Central Police Station in Freeport, Bahamas, on April 13, 2026, after being released from custody. He has been questioned about the disappearance of his wife, Lynette Hooker, who says she fell over their boat earlier this month. (Matthew Symons of Fox News Digital)
“If [the AIS] it stopped completely and never came back, then you would think there was some kind of catastrophic failure in the system. But if it goes off and comes back after some hours, that is an action where the system is closed or disabled,” he added.
Notably, there were three additional instances from April 10 to 13 when the AIS was not transmitting data.
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US Coast Guard investigators search the vessel Soulmate docked at their station in Fort Pierce, Fla., May 13, 2026. The vessel belongs to Brian Hooker and his missing wife Lynette Hooker and was returned to the US from the Bahamas by the coast guard. (Fox News Digital)
Brian Hooker has not been charged with a crime. He was detained for five days by Bahamian police after his wife’s disappearance, but was never charged.
COAST GUARD RELEASES NEW PHOTOS OF SAILBOAT SEIZED IN AMERICAN BAHAMAS DISAPPEARANCE.
Sometime between May 8 and 10, Brian and Lynette Hooker’s boat, Soulmate, was seized, a source familiar with the investigation told Fox News Digital. Soulmate was seized about 40 kilometers off the coast of Melbourne, Florida, according to the US Coast Guard.
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In a news release, the Coast Guard said the seizure was part of an “intensive surveillance and prevention mission.” The boat was taken to the Coast Guard Station in Fort Pierce, where it is being processed for possible evidence.
Brian Hooker’s Michigan-based attorney previously asked Americans to give him the benefit of the doubt in an interview with ABC News.
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“I would ask those watching to treat him the way you would like to be treated, give him the benefit of the doubt, and consider that not all of us, or you, if you consider your relationship, the way you talk to each other, we all handle things in different ways,” said Crystal Marie Hauser.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Hauser for comment.
