A granddaughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and her young son disappeared while paddling a canoe on the windy Chesapeake Bay Thursday afternoon.
The U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement Friday morning that they were searching for a 41-year-old woman and her 8-year-old son, last seen 10 miles south of Annapolis near Herring Bay, Maryland, on Thursday evening.
The Coast Guard didn’t name the boaters, but Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said they were Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean and her son, Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean, the Associated Press reported.
David McKean told the Washington Post his wife and son went missing after paddling out into the bay around 4 p.m. to chase a ball. The family was gathered at a waterfront house owned by his wife’s mother, former Maryland lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who is the eldest daughter of Robert F. Kennedy.
“They just got farther out than they could handle and couldn’t get back in,” McKean said.
Winds gusted to 35 mph in that part of the bay on Thursday afternoon, and a small craft advisory was issued. The windier-than-usual conditions were caused by a strong Atlantic storm churning offshore farther to the north.
Overnight temperatures in the Annapolis area dipped to 48 degrees, while the water temperature in the bay was about 51 degrees.
Searchers found an overturned canoe matching the one that went missing, the Post reported, but no sign of McKean and her son.
The Coast Guard said they were contacted after Maryland State Police received a call that two people were seen struggling to return to shore. An MH-65 helicopter as well as a 45-foot response boat were deployed to the search. A C-130 airplane and another boat crew continued the search Friday. The state police and three other agencies were also assisting.
Holy middle names, Batman.
Imagine you and the fam are at the river house, just having a ball, maybe drinking some brews, maybe cooking out, enjoying a family weekend. A toy lands in the water. Your wife and son hop in the canoe to go retrieve. Fam cheers them on. Wind gusts up and lose sight of them. Within minutes they are gone from this world. Just like that…God I shudder at the thought of it. Beyond devastation.
The entire Kennedy story is just a dad one. Especially the one sister who got a labotomy.
A “dad” one. Interesting typo. Some say old Joe, the patriarch, made a deal with the devil and his offsprings are continuing to pay the price.
Other nutjobs say they’re aliens who find eccentric ways to dump their host bodies to return to their mothership or planet. Whatever the reason for their string of unfortunate deaths & odd predicaments, I rather be anonymously poor than be a part of that clan.
That’s sad and there is a wear a life jacket lesson in there I hope is taken advantage of.
It would have made recovery faster sorry to say. A life jacket only goes so far in 50 degree water. Once in the water they had about an hour tops before being overcome without rescue.
Goes into the Top Secret Chronicles…
Kennedy’s and water just don’t mix well. Started with PT 109, Then the bridge thing with Teddy, the airplane thing, and now this event. It is eerie. Agree, a life jacket perhaps would have made a difference, if in fact they were not worn.
I was on my boat and heard the radio traffic for this. I have it on video if I can figure out how to post it. This is really sad but frustrating. The wind was howling out of the NW all day and they launched from the western shore of the Bay. This is about what you would think would happen 
On the Mediterranean beaches, while playing in the water with off land wind, it arrives often that someone swims out to retrieve a lost ball. This is common, where a strong Mistral may overturn the daytime breeze in a flat sea (only at the beach).
They never return with the ball, sometimes both get lost, the ball and the swimmer.
I have seen paddlers on canoes playing with a ball, a sort of canoe-polo, but this canoe was alone.
There’s a sweet dive spot inside the breakwater in Destin Fl. Wander a bit too close to the entrance and the current will move you out in a hurry. I used to take my novice scuba divers to the spot which was popular with vacationing snorkelers but always warned them to stay clear of the entrance. In one summer I saved well over a dozen snorkelers who got swept out waving their arms yelling for help. They might have got picked up by a good Samaritan outside and maybe not.
First I had to get all my divers back on the boat before pulling up anchor, in a few cases leaving it behind to pick up later. By the time I got to the floataways, dropped the ladder and got them aboard, most were in shock and too exhausted to be coherent. That was in relatively warm water.