GUAYMAS, Mexico -- A body found by a Mexican fisherman during the weekend was identified today as the captain of a sailboat lost at sea on a youth agency's 'survival adventure.' Seven participants still are missing.
The body of Terry Mullaney, 31, a Navy submarine veteran, was located 12 miles south of Punta Chivato, according to Steve Rogers, executive director of VisionQuest Inc. Mullaney's battered 25-foot boat came ashore last Wednesday after trying to cross the stormy Gulf of California.
Coast Guard and Mexican naval units planned to resume efforts today to find the other victims, missing since a storm a week ago. The search was centered 40 miles from the Sonora coastline, about half-way across the 90-mile gulf.
Mullaney was the nephew of Robert L. Burton, board chairman of VisionQuest Inc., the Tucson, Ariz.-based counseling agency for troubled youths that organized the voyage. Mullaney's body was found Sunday on what would have marked his 32nd birthday.
Mullaney, employed by VisionQuest since mid-1975, had worked as a counselor at the agency's sea camp near Guaymas for the past six months.
Mike Cracovaner, VisionQuest administrative director, said he doubted any survivors would be found. Thirty-one other teen-agers and staff members who had been aboard three identical boats returned to Tucson from Guaymas Sunday night.
VisionQuest officials said members of the agency would backpack into remote shoreline areas and use small boats to get into coves as the search continued.
A Mexican fisherman found the body near Concepcion Bay, where Mexican and U.S. authorities have been searching for two instructors and six teen-agers from the Tucson, Ariz., youth home since their battered 25-foot sailboat was found Wednesday night near Punto Chivato on the Baja coast.
Only the body of Bernard Refer, 19, Baden, Pa., was aboard.
Six lifejackets were found on the beach near the wreckage of the sailboat, but Mexican searchers found no footprints or other signs of survivors on land, and it was not known how many lifejackets had been aboard the sailboat.
Vision Quest, described by a spokesman as modeled on the philosophy of the Plains Indians, seeks to rehabilitate juvenile offenders through survival training programs. Vision Quest has rehabilitation contracts with Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania and other states.
Twenty-one teen-agers and nine instructors in four sailboats survived the stormy crossing and regrouped at the Vision Quest office in Guaymas Saturday.
Two Cessna aircraft, leased by Vision Quest and flying out of Hermosillo, Mexico, concentrated their search Saturday on the eastern shoreline of the Baja California Peninsula.
Sunday's search of a 2,500-mile area in the gulf was suspended, however, because both the Coast Guard's helicopter and a C-130 Hercules aircraft developed mechanical problems.
Five wilderness survival instructors from Vision Quest, the voyage's sponsors, were en route to join a land search by Mexican volunteers.
Four of the missing were identified as Eric Shibley, 17, of Tucson; Robert Zimmerman, 17, Butler, Pa.; James Lamb, 14, Granville, Pa.; and Charles Martin Lucas, 16, Brookville, Pa. One of the missing instructors was Terry Mullaney, 32, Tucson.
