29' boat? - I have no problem with that. I've taken a 30' one from SF Bay down to Baja (see attached photo of us aboard Still Clueless on the '99 HaHa).
Young kids aboard? Again, I don't have a problem with that. Their youngest was younger than I've traveled with, but lots of people do it successfully.
No life raft or ready substitute such as a dinghy ready to launch or survival suits for all aboard? - I have a HUGE problem with this!
No working GPS? - Another HUGE problem. these things are so cheap that any boat traveling out of sight of land should have at least a couple of them.
No EPIRB? - Another big problem. See my comment below regarding kids and the skipper's responsibilities.
65 miles out? - That's a lot further out than the rhumb line, but with no GPS, they had to be using dead reckoning navigation and it's certainly believable that they were that far out unless they had just left from Santa Cruz.

I've been there and know that on small boats, finding room for a life raft becomes difficult, but that's no excuse, especially when you have kids aboard. As adults we routinely make informed decisions about acceptable risks, but when you have kids with you, skipping basic precautions is criminal. Analogous to forcing your kids to ride in the car without seat belts.

As some of you know, I've got a fair number of cruising miles under my keel and the name of the game is to always have a back up plan for any eventuality that you can imagine. You also try mightily to have a back up plan for the back up plan and maybe a plan C as well because when things start to go wrong, problems often don't come alone, they tend to show up in groups. We don't know a lot about the boat or anything about the people aboard, but from where I sit, I just don't see the back up planning.