Navy rescues two women stranded on boat for five months
The lost sailors were trying to navigate their way from Hawaii to Tahiti
Aplanned voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti aboard a small sailboat didn’t start off well for two Honolulu women. One of their mobile phones washed overboard and sank into the deep blue water on their first day at sea.
From there, things got worse. Much worse. About a month into their trip, bad weather caused their engine to lose power. Their mast was damaged. And then, as they drifted across thousands of kilometres of open ocean, their water purifier stopped working.
But the two sailors, accompanied by their dogs, were resourceful and had prepared with more than a year’s worth of food, and after more than five months of being lost in the vast Pacific Ocean, sending out daily distress calls that no one heard, they were rescued by the US Navy on Wednesday about 1,448 kilometres southeast of Japan. Their intended destination: Tahiti — thousands of miles off course.
The USS Ashland rescued the women after a Taiwanese fishing vessel spotted their crippled vessel on Tuesday and alerted the US Coast Guard, the Navy said in a statement released on Thursday.
The women, identified by the Navy as Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava, both from Honolulu, lost their engine in bad weather in late May but believed they could still reach Tahiti using their sails. “They saved our lives,” said Appel through the Navy release. “The pride and smiles we had when we saw [the US Navy] on the horizon was pure relief.”