Adrift for months, alive to tell tale

Two American women finally on solid ground

WHITE BEACH NAVAL FACILITY, Japan — Two women from Hawaii who were adrift on a storm-battered sailboat in the Pacific for months set foot on solid ground Monday at a U.S. Navy base in southern Japan.

The USS Ashland rescued Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava and their two dogs about 900 miles southeast of Japan and brought them to America’s White Beach Naval Facility after waiting for a typhoon to pass.

The two women had left Honolulu on May 3 aboard Appel’s 50-foot vessel for what was supposed to be an 18-day trip to Tahiti. Storms flooded the engine, destroying the starter and damaged the mast so badly that they couldn’t generate enough wind power to stay on course, they said.

The two women tried to return and at one point in June were within 726 nautical miles of Oahu but couldn’t make it, Appel said.

“We knew we weren’t going to make it,” she said. “So that’s when we started making distress calls. We were hoping that one of our friends who likes to go deep sea fishing and taking people out might have gone past the 400-mile mark and might have cruised near where we would be.”

The women said they drifted aimlessly and sent unanswered distress calls for 98 consecutive days.

They were thousands of miles in the wrong direction when a Taiwanese fishing vessel found them. Towing the sailboat damaged it further, but Appel said she paddled over to the Taiwanese vessel on a surfboard and made a mayday call. The Ashland traveled 100 miles and found them the next day, said the ship’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Steven Wasson.

On Wednesday, the USS Ashland picked up the women and the dogs, all four looking remarkably fit for having been lost at sea for nearly six months.

Appel told reporters on Friday that they were beginning to believe they were completely out of luck when they saw the U.S. Navy ship chugging toward them.

“When I saw the gray ship on the horizon, I was just shaking,” she said then.“iwasreadytocry,iwasso happy. I knew we were going to live.”

The Navy ship, which transports and deploys amphibious landing craft, wasn’t equipped to bring the sailboat back, so it was abandoned at sea.

Koji Ueda The Associated Press Jennifer Appel, right, and Tasha Fuiava sit with their dogs Monday on the deck of the USS Ashland at White Beach Naval Facility in Okinawa, Japan.