In this undated photo provided by Maritime New Zealand, the yacht Nina is tied at dock at a unidentified location. Searchers said Thursday, June 27, 2013, they have grave concerns for seven people aboard... (Associated Press) 
 
 A New Zealand meteorologist took the last known calls from the seven people aboard an American schooner, "The weather's turned nasty, how do we get away from it?" 
 
 The phone calls and texts ended June 4. More than three weeks later, searchers said Thursday they have grave concerns for the crew on the classic 85-year-old wooden vessel that went missing while sailing from New Zealand to Australia. Attempts to contact the crew by radio and an aerial search this week have proved fruitless. 
 
 Authorities say the skipper of the 70-foot (21-meter) vessel Nina is American David Dyche. They say there are two other American men and three American women aboard, aged between 17 and 73. Also aboard is a British man, aged 35. 
 
 Messages posted online by friends indicate the boat originally left from Panama City, Florida. 
 
 Meteorologist Bob McDavitt said he took a satellite phone call from the boat June 3. A woman named Evi asked how to get away from the weather. He said to call back in 30 minutes after he'd studied a forecast. She did. 
 
 "She was quite controlled in her voice, it sounded like everything was under control," McDavitt said, adding that the call itself indicated she was concerned about the conditions. 
 
 McDavitt said he spoke only briefly to Evi, advising her to head south and to brace for a storm with strong winds and high seas. The next day he got a text, the last known communication from the boat: "ANY UPDATE 4 NINA? ... EVI" 
 
 McDavitt said he advised the crew to stay put and ride out the storm another day. He continued sending messages the next few days but didn't hear back. Friends of the crew got in touch with McDavitt soon after that, and then alerted authorities June 14. 
 
 Kevin Banaghan, who is spearheading search efforts by Maritime New Zealand's Rescue Coordination Centre, said rescuers weren't worried at first because there had been no distress call from the boat and its emergency locator beacon had not been activated. He said rescuers on June 14 initiated a communications search, in which they tried contacting the boat over various radio frequencies as well as contacting other vessels in the area to see if they'd spotted the Nina. 
 
 This week, he said, rescuers escalated their efforts. An Air Force plane on Tuesday searched the area where the boat went missing. A second search by the plane on Wednesday went as far as the Australian coast but again turned up nothing. Banaghan said searchers are considering their next options. 
 
 The boat left the Bay of Islands in northern New Zealand on May 29 bound for the port of Newcastle, near Sydney. The last communication was from 370 nautical miles west of New Zealand. 
 
 Banaghan said the crew hoped to arrive in Australia mid-June but that, given the conditions, he considered a realistic arrival date to be about June 25. He said Dyche is a qualified captain and the crew has varying degrees of experience. 
 
 "We're very concerned for their safety and wellbeing," he said. 
 
 Authorities say the storm three weeks ago saw winds gusting up to 110 kilometers (68 miles) per hour and waves of up to 8 meters (26 feet). 
 
 Banaghan said the Nina is a "lovely old craft" which won races when it was new and had been maintained in excellent condition. He added that it had a new engine installed in recent months which had apparently created some initial leaking problems. 
 
 He said there are several possible scenarios, including the boat losing communications, drifting off course, or the crew taking to lifeboats. He said there's also a possibility the boat suffered a catastrophic failure and sank before anybody had time to react. ||||| In this undated photo provided by Robin Wright, Ricky Wright and wife Robin Wright sit at a dock in the New Zealand port of Whangarei, where the wooden sailboat Nina was moored in 2013. The couple have... (Associated Press) 
 
 WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Here's how Robin Wright sees it: Her 19-year-old daughter Danielle is adrift on the Pacific Ocean but is keeping her spirits up with her six crewmates on their wooden sailboat, the Niña. They're collecting rainwater, rationing food, singing, telling travel stories and planning their next adventures. Heck, Wright figures, by now Danielle may even have gotten married to one of the three young men aboard. After all, the Niña's captain is a registered celebrant. 
 
 New Zealand authorities see it very differently: They believe the 70-foot (21-meter) schooner likely sank more than eight months ago after getting battered by a storm as the crew attempted to cross the Tasman Sea from New Zealand to Australia. That's when the boat's crew stopped using their satellite phone. A search turned up no sign of the vessel and they believe there's no real chance any of them are still alive. 
 
 But Robin and husband Ricky have found it hard to give up the search for their only child. The couple from Lafayette, Louisiana, has spent the last three months living in Australia and spearheading their own search, long after New Zealand authorities gave up. This month, Ricky Wright earned his pilot's license. His aim was to fly the Australian coastline in hopes of spotting something. Anything. 
 
 They've spent $600,000 to pay for private plane searches. The money has come not only from their own savings but also from fundraisers, friends, family, even their daughter's college fund. Deeply religious, the couple says God has kept them strong and determined. 
 
 "We cannot assume the boat sank without evidence, and we think it's highly likely that it did not," Robin Wright says. "We know there's a chance the boat sank. There is a chance. But do you assume the worst and stop searching?" 
 
 Still, the search has to end at some point. 
 
 On Tuesday the Wrights, speaking by phone from the Sydney Airport, said they were returning to the U.S after running out of money and were unsure if they would return to Australia. Still, they won't lose hope until the anniversary of the boat's disappearance. 
 
 "After a year, I think the chances are down pretty low," Ricky Wright says. "But we will not give up on them. We know other people have survived up to a year." 
 
 The Wrights remain unhappy with aspects of the official search. They believe it began too late, wasn't extensive enough, and failed to restart when they presented authorities with a grainy satellite image they believe depicts the Niña adrift. New Zealand searchers say they did everything by the book and cannot do anything more. They say the military reviewed the ghostly image and concluded it was nothing more than the foam from a wave. 
 
 The Wrights last month met New Zealand's Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee in Wellington to express their concerns. 
 
 "They have enormous faith that the boat is still out there, that they're catching fish and freshwater, and will sooner or later make landfall. Unfortunately, none of our very extensive and expert-led search efforts concurs with that view," Brownlee says. 
 
 Ricky, 49, who brokers the sale of businesses, and Robin, 54, met at Louisiana State University. They home-schooled Danielle on their small farm, where their daughter loved to ride bareback on her horse, Copper. When Danielle was 15, the family took a sabbatical to sail the Caribbean. 
 
 "We sold everything and we went, and we don't regret it," Robin says. 
 
 She says while she and Ricky loved the tranquility, their daughter missed her friends and Facebook, and the Internet. So they sent her home every few months to reconnect, and reduced a planned two-year voyage to 14 months. 
 
 The highlight for Danielle was a stop in Panama where she met David Dyche IV, one year her junior, who'd been raised aboard the Niña. The teens soon became inseparable and the parents also became close. 
 
 When captain David Dyche III and wife Rosemary last year called from New Zealand to ask the Wrights to help crew, Danielle asked if she could go alone, during a break from the University of Louisiana where she was majoring in psychology. Her parents weren't surprised — she'd grown to more appreciate her time sailing the Caribbean and also had become so independent. 
 
 They said goodbye to Danielle on Facebook the day before she set sail, and she told them how excited she was. 
 
 The Niña left from the tiny port of Opua in northern New Zealand on May 29 bound for Newcastle, near Sydney. 
 
 As well as Danielle and the Dyches, also aboard was Kyle Jackson, 27, who grew up on a Nebraska cattle ranch; Matthew Wootton, 35, a British musician and Green Party member; and Evi Nemeth, 73, a retired University of Colorado computer science professor who two years earlier had reroofed her own house. All loved the outdoors and adventure. 
 
 A few days out, Nemeth used the satellite phone to call a New Zealand meteorologist: The weather had turned nasty, she told him, and they were seeking advice to avoid the worst of the storm. The last known communication from the Niña was a text sent June 4: "Thanks storm sails shredded last night, now bare poles" followed by a course heading. 
 
 The text never reached its intended recipient and was only later recovered by satellite phone company Iridium. The Niña had an emergency beacon aboard but it was never activated. 
 
 New Zealand searchers say they were first told the boat was missing on June 14. They began trying to communicate with the crew but were unsuccessful. On June 25, the day authorities calculated the Niña should have reached Australia, they began a two-week aerial search. 
 
 Nigel Clifford, the general manager of safety and response services at Maritime New Zealand, says they didn't get a plane up right away in line with standard international practice — without a distress call, they wait until a boat is overdue before beginning an aerial search because there could be any number of reasons why a boat loses its communications. 
 
 "Given there was no debris, that would further suggest the boat sank. But it is a really big ocean. A really big ocean," Clifford says 
 
 Clifford says a relative of another missing Niña crew member was present when searchers had to tell him they were abandoning the aerial search. 
 
 "He said that in his heart he couldn't accept what had happened," Clifford says, "but in his head, he could."
– Six Americans and a Brit have vanished without a trace on the high seas between New Zealand and Australia, aboard the 70-foot vessel the Nina, CNN reports.The crew was last heard from on June 4 while battling rough conditions—68mph gusts and waves as high as 26 feet—about a week after their historic schooner left New Zealand's Bay of Islands. Friends reported the vessel missing on June 14, and the fact that its emergency beacon was never activated gave rescuers hope. But the picture that's forming of the Nina's last known movements sounds less promising. A woman aboard the 85-year-old vessel called a New Zealand meteorologist via satellite phone on June 3, asking him, "The weather's turned nasty, how do we get away from it?" They spoke briefly, with Bob McDavitt advising the group to sail south. The following day he received the following text: "ANY UPDATE 4 NINA? ... EVI." After that, the boat vanished, with two aerial searches turning up nothing. More foreboding details, per the AP: The rescue coordinator says the boat realistically should have arrived in Australia two days ago, and the Nina dealt with some leaking issues earlier this year after a new engine was installed. He expressed "grave concerns" to the Age.