MISSING OFF THE ABACOS: THE CASE OF MIGUEL CAMPOY

Florida Unsolved is examining the disappearance of Miguel Ángel Campoy, a Miami-based sailor who vanished off the Bahamas in September 2025. What follows is what we can establish from the public record, contemporary reporting and information released by his family. The Campoy family has also agreed to provide Florida Unsolved with primary records and other evidence for independent review. We will continue updating this investigation as that material is examined.

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On the morning of September 6, 2025, Miguel Campoy left South Abaco, Bahamas, alone aboard his approximately 44-foot, blue-hulled sailboat Hella, bound for New Providence.

He never arrived.

More than a year later, neither Campoy nor Hella has been found. The vessel's support dinghy was recovered adrift days after he disappeared. No confirmed debris from Hella itself has been publicly reported.

Who is Miguel Campoy?

Campoy, a dual Spanish-American national, was 56 when he disappeared and is now 57. Born January 20, 1969, in Madrid, he had lived in Miami for about a decade with his wife and worked in the nautical sector. Family members and contemporary reporting describe him as an experienced sailor and qualified yacht captain accustomed to long passages, including sailing alone.

Those close to Campoy describe him as a man who loves the sea, freedom and adventure. When he disappeared, he had plans for what came next. He had left Miami in August 2025 for the Bahamas and intended to continue through the Caribbean, with Puerto Rico among his planned destinations.

His family says the plan went further than that: Campoy ultimately intended to leave Miami, establish himself in Puerto Rico and begin a new chapter. That relocation plan is described in the family's materials, although Florida Unsolved has not yet independently established how far those plans had progressed.

On September 6, Campoy was headed from South Abaco toward New Providence, where he planned to meet two longtime friends arriving from Spain before continuing his voyage.

The last contacts

According to contemporary reporting, Campoy departed South Abaco at approximately 10:15 a.m. on September 6. At about 12:30 p.m., he sent his family an image from a marine-navigation application showing his planned route and sailing information.

One early report also says he described himself at that point as having already been at sea for six hours — a timeline that does not reconcile with the reported 10:15 departure. Florida Unsolved is therefore not treating both times as established without examining the underlying communications.

Communication continued later that afternoon.

Family materials place another message at approximately 4:30 p.m. and his final app connection shortly before 5 p.m. His last known communication with relatives came at about 6 p.m. He reported calm conditions and indicated that the journey was taking longer than expected. The family's materials say he had also mentioned light winds, considerable ship traffic and running somewhat off course.

Then the communications stopped.

There was no known Mayday or other distress transmission.

There is also an unresolved issue concerning Campoy's precise last known position. The family has circulated coordinates derived from its records, while a NamUs-derived listing gives an approximate last-known location of 25.668151 N, -77.340655 W.

More recently, the family obtained what it believes is a more precise geographic reference using Starlink data.

Until Florida Unsolved can examine and reconcile the underlying records, we are not treating any one published coordinate as definitive.

Relatives reported Campoy missing the following day, September 7, and contacted Spanish consular authorities, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Royal Bahamas Defence Force.

Hella

Some early reporting identified Campoy's sailboat as Jolie. The Campoy family has now clarified that this was an identification error during the first days of the search and that Jolie was never a former name of Campoy's vessel.

The family says the vessel's identity was subsequently confirmed through the entry documentation Campoy completed upon arriving in Bimini, as well as title and registration records obtained afterward.

Those records identify the vessel as Hella.

The family has agreed to provide the underlying documentation to Florida Unsolved for review.

Hella was a privately operated recreational sailing vessel approximately 44 feet — 13.4 meters — long, with a blue hull. Campoy reportedly sometimes referred to the boat simply as “Blue,” while its official name was difficult to see because it appeared beneath the boarding ladder at the stern.

One other characteristic of Hella is particularly important to reconstructing Campoy's final voyage:

The vessel apparently did not carry AIS.

The family says it has identified no Maritime Mobile Service Identity, or MMSI, associated with the vessel.

If confirmed by the records now being assembled for review, Hella would therefore not appear as an AIS target in maritime traffic records from September 6.

That distinction matters.

The family's analysis of AIS data concerns other vessels known to have traveled through the relevant area and time window. It is not an electronic track of Hella itself.

AIS may therefore help establish what other equipped vessels were nearby.

It cannot, by itself, establish where Hella was.

The dinghy

Campoy's dinghy may be one of the most important physical pieces of evidence in the case.

The Campoy family has clarified that Miguel did not normally carry the dinghy aboard Hella or suspend it from davits.

He towed it behind the sailboat.

That distinction could eventually matter when considering how the dinghy became separated from Hella, although it does not by itself tell us when or why that separation occurred.

Three days after Campoy disappeared, his dinghy was reportedly spotted adrift approximately 17 kilometers from the family's then-understood last position for Hella.

It was not immediately recovered.

On September 13, after drifting farther, the dinghy was located again and recovered by Bahamian authorities. The family's account says it had traveled roughly 25 miles southwest from where it had first been observed.

Campoy wasn't aboard.

His family says the dinghy contained numerous personal and safety items, including identification documents, dry backpacks, binoculars, water, a handheld radio, flashlight, flare equipment, life jackets, fuel, communications equipment and an emergency beacon that had not been activated.

The family also reports that the line used to secure the dinghy to Hella remained with the dinghy and that its engine and other equipment were recovered in conditions that may ultimately be relevant to reconstructing what occurred.

Those details potentially matter. But Florida Unsolved is treating the precise inventory, configuration and condition of the recovered equipment as family-reported information pending examination of the underlying photographs, records and any available official recovery or evidence documentation.

What is clear from public reporting is that Campoy was not found with the dinghy and that no confirmed wreckage from Hella has publicly surfaced.

The U.S. Coast Guard subsequently suspended its search in accordance with its protocols. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force continued searching and, by mid-September, indicated that its operation might transition from search to recovery because of the elapsed time and diminishing prospects for survival at sea.

Where the case stands

Responsibility for the investigation has since shifted, according to Campoy's family, from the Royal Bahamas Defence Force to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

The case is also registered in the U.S. National Missing and Unidentified Persons System as MP156855, and the family says the matter has been referred to the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service.

But the family says communication from investigators has largely stopped.

Relatives told The Tribune that they have received no update from the RBPF since approximately December 2025. The family also says it still does not know whether Campoy's belongings recovered from the dinghy underwent forensic examination, including fingerprint processing.

That does not establish that such examinations were not performed — only that the family says it has not been told whether they were.

In March 2026, the family launched a fundraising campaign to finance private searches, technical analysis, investigators and legal action. The campaign set a goal of €18,000 and has continued receiving contributions since its launch.

According to the family, satellite imagery and maritime-traffic analysis identified commercial vessel traffic in the relevant area and time window. Relatives have sought information from at least one vessel's captain or operating company without obtaining the answers they are seeking.

That is an investigative lead — not evidence that another vessel was involved in Campoy's disappearance.

The family has been explicit about that distinction.

The objective is to determine what crews traveling through the area may have seen.

The family is also attempting to obtain Campoy's telephone records — including activity after his last known contact — after earlier attempts through his carrier and device manufacturer were unsuccessful. Bahamian attorneys retained by the family in May are now pursuing records and vessel information through legal channels.

And the newer Starlink information may provide something the investigation badly needs: a better-defined starting point.

Someone may have seen Hella

The family's current appeal is unusually specific.

They are asking sailors, fishermen, commercial crews and others who were in the New Providence Channel on the afternoon of September 6, 2025 to go back through material they may still possess: photographs, videos, GPS tracks, electronic logbooks and messages.

The apparent absence of AIS aboard Hella makes that appeal potentially even more important.

If Hella wasn't transmitting its position, another vessel's incidental observation could represent one of the few remaining ways to independently place the sailboat at a particular location and time after Campoy's last confirmed communications.

Someone may have photographed the ocean, another vessel, the sunset or something entirely unrelated — with a blue-hulled sailboat somewhere in the frame.

More than a year later, an image that meant nothing when it was taken could potentially establish where Hella was at a particular time.

What happened aboard Hella?

At present, we don't know.

A collision, sudden mechanical or structural failure, an accidental man-overboard event, rapid sinking and other possibilities have all appeared in discussions of the case. Campoy's family has also publicly rejected suggestions that he intentionally disappeared.

None of those possibilities has been established by the publicly available evidence.

And the absence of a distress call, while important, doesn't by itself tell us what happened. Some maritime emergencies unfold too quickly for a Mayday; others do not.

Likewise, the recovery of Campoy's dinghy containing personal belongings is potentially informative, but its significance depends heavily on facts that remain uncertain.

We now have information that Campoy normally towed the dinghy behind Hella.

That makes several questions particularly important:

When did it separate from Hella?

How did it separate?

What was the condition of its towing equipment when it was first observed?

Was its subsequent movement consistent with passive drift from Campoy's last known position?

What do the winds, currents and sea conditions indicate?

And what can the physical condition of the dinghy and its contents tell us about what happened before it was found?

Those are questions to investigate rather than spaces to fill with speculation.

The Florida connection

Campoy had lived in Miami for approximately a decade and departed from South Florida in August before beginning the voyage that ultimately took him to South Abaco.

Hella was reported by Bahamian authorities as carrying Florida registration FL0011MU. The Campoy family says it possesses the vessel's title and registration documentation and is providing that material to Florida Unsolved for review.

That gives this international disappearance a significant Florida footprint.

Florida Unsolved is reviewing what records may exist on this side of the water, including records concerning Hella and the U.S. search and investigative response.

What we still don't know

Several fundamental questions remain unanswered.

We have not yet established which of the differing published coordinates represents Hella's most reliable final known position.

We do not yet possess an official evidence inventory or forensic report for the recovered dinghy.

We don't know whether usable fingerprints, DNA or other forensic material were recovered from it.

We have not yet reviewed the underlying Starlink records.

We have not independently examined the maritime-traffic analysis commissioned by the family.

We don't know what, if anything, investigators have learned from vessels identified as having traveled through the area.

And we don't yet know whether the dinghy's observed drift can be reliably reconstructed backward toward a probable separation area.

There is also an apparent discrepancy in the early timeline: the reported 10:15 a.m. departure does not readily square with an account that Campoy described himself at 12:30 p.m. as already having been at sea for six hours.

One previous uncertainty, however, now has a straightforward explanation.

The early identification of Campoy's sailboat as Jolie was, according to the family, the result of a mistaken identification during the first days of the search. Subsequent entry, title and registration documentation identified the vessel as Hella. Florida Unsolved expects to examine those underlying records directly.

That correction illustrates something important about unresolved cases.

A contradiction in the public record isn't necessarily evidence that something mysterious happened.

Sometimes it is evidence that information has a history.

Understanding that history — where a fact originated, when it entered the record, how it was repeated and what primary evidence ultimately supports it — can resolve an apparent contradiction rather than deepen it.

That is why Florida Unsolved intends to distinguish carefully between what is documented, what is reported, what is inferred and what remains unknown.

Campoy has now been missing for more than a year.

He remains missing.

Hella remains missing.

His dinghy was recovered.

And his family continues searching for both answers and evidence.

The family has agreed to provide Florida Unsolved with a substantial collection of material assembled during the past year, including a detailed chronology, official records, photographs, communications, location data, vessel documentation and records concerning the various investigative efforts.

We will examine that material before drawing further conclusions.

Because in a case like this, the objective isn't to construct the most compelling story.

It's to determine what the evidence will actually support.

And that is where this investigation continues.

If you were aboard a vessel in or around the New Providence Channel on September 6, 2025, preserve and review any photographs, video, GPS tracks, electronic logs or communications from that day.

If you have information concerning the disappearance of Miguel Campoy, the family asks that you contact +34 666 67 42 19 or findmiguelcampoy@gmail.com.