Unfortunately, I fear you are not. The fact that the Coast Guard apparently triangulated their position to 65 miles off shore seems telling to me. I just hope this is misreporting on someone's part. Your other points are well taken though.

If they were in fact that far out, VHF communication would have been difficult at best. I'm sure that, like me, you've experienced unusual propagation. I recall one time when I held a brief conversation over VHF across a distance of something like 250 miles. It gobsmacked me when it happened, but that's hardly the norm. I don't know how high the Coast Guard's Monterrey & Santa Cruz antennas are or what the normal communication limit is for them, but that had to be pushing it.