(CNN)Lewis Bennett and his wife Isabella Hellman had just welcomed a new daughter when they set sail last April with the intention of sailing from St. Maarten to Florida on a catamaran named “Surf Into Summer.”
Bennett was the captain, a skilled swimmer and sailor. His wife was a weak swimmer with less sailing experience, according to court papers. Unlike her husband, she wasn’t trained on how to handle emergencies, prosecutors say.
But two weeks into the trip, there was an emergency after they left Cuba. Bennett reported his wife missing in a distress call to the Coast Guard, who rescued him from a life raft about 30 miles west of Cay Sal, Bahamas, not far from Cuba in May 2017. Hellman’s body was never found.
