Sheer joy after Navy rescues women stranded at sea for 147 days

Two American woman and their dogs are safe after being stranded on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for nearly five months. The U.S. Navy came to their rescue. Vladimir Duthiers reports.

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[tuck]

I'm having a hard time understanding how the boat floated 147 days, but for some reason it would have sank in another 24 hours.

[escarfangorn]

I'm sorry, as a yachtsman with 36 years of experience both sea and inland I find this story extremely supicious. Boat sits high. Mast is upright. Rigging is there. They have at least 2 sails still on the boat with enough lines on them to jerryrig a smaller sail just to get 2-3k of speed. If the ruddere was damaged, you can jerry rig one too with what you have on board. You won't be able to tack or go through hard weather, but that's better then being adrift. Radios failed? They should have at least an emergency raft with EPIRB. They didn't take spare radios, but had food and water for 147 days for two adult humans and dogs? Either there is a lot of information missing or badly conveyed by the report or the two ladies are completly cluless or... this was a stunt.

[jimsmith]

i saw this on the local news, even the sailors who rescued them said it was suspicious, the head sail had never been unfurled, the one woman would not let the other talk alone to the media.

[johnkewley]

I DON'T BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD REGARDING THIS STORY

[march]

It would really be interesting to find out what REALLY happened?

[BDiaz]

I’ve been a professional mariner for almost 30 years and grew up sailing long before that. I have lots of questions. From what I can tell just watching the video these women had no business at sea.

[matrixclone]

I think there is a whole lot more to this story, this stinks to high heaven!

[TM-twpy]

They women and dogs seemed extremely healthy after running out of food and water and being adrift for 147 days.

[themfs]

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful

[missingthes]

Doesn't add up. This story feels like when you meet someone on the side of the road with a flat tire who're waiting on tow truck that will cost big money and 2 hours to get there and when you ask them, they have a spare, a floor jack and a 4-Way tire iron in the trunk and absolutely no mental capacity to even consider let alone attempt to replace it.

I've never known a sail boat of that size to not have spare sails, lines and pretty much everything short of a spare engine. Something doesn't add up.

[rohawaha]

I have been in the Marine industry all my life, my father was a Navy lifer and an Instructor at the Annapolis Naval Academy . At age 12 we were working on civilian boats together. When I first expressed my desire to have my own sailboat, he turned and said " If you cannot repair every part of your boat at sea, you don't belong at sea " he was correct. My wife and I cruised a 40 foot sailboat for four years after our youngest daughter graduated college. Even with all the knowledge I had gained in the industry, it was almost a full time job maintaining and repairing all the different systems on the boat . Those lady's should have been able to rig some sail to overcome current and wind to navigate to shore, the mast, boom and the for-stay were up . Something is not quite right here.

[berniecoles]

Boat looks fine to me and sitting high in the water. There’s more to this than meets the eye.

[ajones]

Thank goodness they had an unlimited supply of clam to eat on board.

[shawnmoler]

Survived 147 days on the boat but the moment they get rescued the boat only had 24 hrs left before it sank?

[Rem]

Article from the New York Times about this:
The story of two women who were stranded at sea for 5 months in shark-infested waters seemed almost too cinematic to be true. And now some experts are questioning the veracity of some of their claims.

Jennifer Appel, Tasha Fuiava, and their two dogs left their home state of Hawaii on a voyage to Tahiti back on May 3rd. After being stranded for what they say was months, the women were spotted last week by a Taiwanese fishing vessel roughly 900 miles southeast of Japan and the Navy’s USS Ashland ship was deployed to save them.


The women were incredibly grateful for being picked up and the US Navy confirmed that their boat wasn’t fit to sail, but other questions started to arise, such as why they didn’t use an emergency beacon to call for help.

The Associated Press looked into it, and confirmed that the two had an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) aboard but never turned it on. According to the women, they felt that they weren’t in any immediate danger that would necessitate sending out an emergency signal.

“We asked why during this course of time did they not activate the EPIRB. She had stated they never felt like they were truly in distress, like in a 24-hour period they were going to die, ” US Coast Guard spokesperson Tara Molle told the Associated Press.

Another claim made by the women was that they experienced a 3-day storm that reached winds in excess of 60 miles per hour. But the National Weather Service in Honolulu says that no such storm occurred and NASA weather images don’t show anything like that. Such a storm would be incredibly rare in that part of the world in May.

And then there’s the claim of vicious sharks in the area, which Appel said were teaching their young to hunt.

“They came by to slap their tails and tell us we needed to move along, ” Appel said on a phone call with reporters immediately after they were rescued. “They decided to use our vessel to teach their children how to hunt. They attacked at night.”

But experts don’t believe it.

“It sounds like something a 4-year-old would tell you, ” George Burgess, a shark expert at the Florida Museum of Natural History told the New York Times. “No. No, no and no and no. There’s not an iota of accuracy relative to our knowledge of the shark in any of that.”

“The only one that fits that pattern was the star of the movie Jaws, ” he said.

One thing that keeps coming up that would chalk up some of these inconsistencies to ignorance rather than malice or a possible hoax is just how green the women were. Fuiava had never sailed before and Appel copped to her own relative inexperience in difficult sailing conditions in a video made after they were rescued.

When you watch the video of the women aboard the USS Ashland they seem both sincere and relieved that they were saved. But people who doubt their story will certainly raise their eyebrows about one comment made by Appel.

“I was joking with someone about ten years ago, and they said ‘What happens when you go out to sea and you get broken?’ and I said, ‘Well, the Navy will come and save me.’ No lie, ” Appel said. “It really happened.”

[New York Times]

[jasonr]

Nothing about this adds up.

The rig looks completely intact. The main absolutely did not sit there for 100 days not even properly secured. The jib is still perfectly furled.

This boat is not stranded or sinking.

[sarnxero]

They still have a sail. It's right there on the boom. What kept them from getting any sail up? I'm baffled.

[eddieboggs]

That long at sea yet look fresh and clean. Something suspicious going on here.

[Sugarsail]

I've sailed across the Pacific alone in a boat 1/2 that size. I honestly don't see how you can be stranded at sea that long with an intact boat. Just the current drift in the trade winds alone is at least a knot, that's 750 miles a month just drifting in the WORST case scenario. In five months that would take you anywhere you wanted as long as it was westbound and there are thousands of islands in the Pacific to head to that are well within that range. With their mast up they could easily rig a small jury rig and get 2-3 knots of speed out of that boat. Not sure what these clowns were doing, but they are absolutely lousy sailors.

[cerebralcaustic]

The dog's like 'these ladies are clueless! Please save us'