Women and dogs lost at sea for months rescued
HONOLULU — Two women and their dogs have been rescued after being lost at sea for months while trying to sail from Hawaii to Tahiti.
The U.S. navy rescued the women on Wednesday after a Taiwanese fishing vessel spotted them about 1,450 kilometres southeast of Japan, well off their planned course, and alerted the U.S. Coast Guard.
The USS Ashland arrived early the next day, the navy said in a statement released Thursday.
The women, identified by the navy as Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiaba, both of Honolulu, lost their engine in bad weather in late May but believed they could still reach Tahiti using their sails.
“They saved our lives,” Appel said through the navy statement. “The pride and smiles we had when we saw [the U.S. navy] on the horizon was pure relief.”
Appel’s mother told the Associated Press Thursday that she never gave up hope that her resourceful daughter would be found.
Joyce Appel, 75, who lives in Houston, said she got a call from her daughter early Thursday morning, more than five months after they last spoke.
She answered the phone as she always does, wondering who wanted to sell her something, when she heard her daughter’s voice on the other end of the line.
“She said: ‘Mom?’ and I said: ‘Jennifer?’ because I hadn’t heard from in, like, five months,” she said. “And she said ‘yes, Mom,’ and that was really exciting.”
Jennifer Appel departed on May 3, her mother said, but her phone was lost overboard the first day she was at sea, and she hadn’t heard from her daughter since.
“Various things on her boat broke, the mast broke and the engine wouldn’t start when she needed power. So she had several problems that caused her to end up drifting in the ocean,” the elder Appel said.
Joyce called the U.S. Coast Guard about a week and half after her daughter left Honolulu, she said. “The coast guard, in Hawaii, did a search and rescue effort,” she said. “I waited and waited and waited to see when I would hear from her.”
The mother said the pair’s water purifier had stopped working and they were down to their last gallon of water when Jennifer got it fixed.
Two months into their trip, well after they were scheduled to arrive in Tahiti, the women began making distress calls, but there were no vessels close and they were too far out to sea for the signals to be detected on land.
They told the navy that they survived because they had packed in a water purifier and enough food for a year, mostly dried goods like oatmeal and pasta.
A photo provided by the navy shows Fuiaba smiling as a navy sailor greets her dog, Zeus aboard the USS Ashland.
The women received a medical assessment, food and beds aboard the navy ship, where they will remain until the next port of call, the navy said.