PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) – The U.S. Coast Guard was searching Sunday for two sailors who abandoned their boat in rough seas about 400 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach.

Thomas Tighe, from Patterson, N.Y., and Lochlin Reidy, from Woodbridge, Conn., abandoned their 45-foot sailboat, Almeisan, after it began taking on water from 16- to 20-foot seas, said Petty Officer Krys Hannum, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

Three other sailors, Donald Burd of Dover, N.H., Christopher Ferrer of Sterling, Mass., and Kathleen Gilchrist of Bloomfield, N.J., stayed aboard. They were airlifted to Nantucket, the closest land point, around 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

The Coast Guard received an electronic distress beacon from the boat at 6 a.m. Sunday, Hannum said. A C-130 airplane from Elizabeth City, N.C., searched the area and found a life raft, but it was covered and the crew couldn’t determine if anyone was aboard.

Four merchant ships were diverted to the area, and the first one there found the life raft empty, Hannum said.

The three sailors on board the sailboat told the Coast Guard that Tighe and Reidy abandoned ship and that their life raft became tethered and broke away from the boat.

The sailors were on a voyage from Bridgeport, Conn., to Bermuda when they encountered the severe weather, including 28- to 33-knot winds.

Three ships continue to search for Tighe and Reidy, in addition to a C-130 airplane. Another C-130 from Clearwater, Fla., was en route Sunday night. Several airplanes and helicopters were used in the search Sunday because of the distance from shore, Hannum said.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard helped rescue four people Sunday from a demasted sailboat 240 miles east of Cape Hatteras, N.C.

Norm Pilkey, owner of the double-masted boat, Eskasoni, contacted the Coast Guard Wednesday to report trouble with his masts. He had left the Chesapeake Bay with his wife, Phillippa, and two other men on Monday. The group was headed to Bermuda.

Pilkey requested the four be evacuated Sunday afternoon.

Sunday’s were the fifth and sixth weather-related search and rescue cases in three days out of the Coast Guard’s rescue coordination center at Norfolk.

The Coast Guard said it rescued two men from a sailboat 55 miles east of Cape Lookout, N.C., on Saturday after nasty weather battered their sailboat.

Their 40-foot boat, At Ease, was caught in the rough water after leaving Newport News on Thursday headed to Charleston, S.C.

Robert Cummings, 40, the vessel’s owner from Newport News, and Jerry McCarthy, 35, from Charleston, S.C., were aboard the sailboat when it had engine problems and a hatch was knocked out by a wave. The men told the Coast Guard that the boat was rolled by waves that knocked them overboard at least twice.