Honolulu women rescued after voyage went from bad to worse

Honolulu women rescued after voyage went from bad to worse



A planned voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti aboard a small sailboat descended into a five-month nightmare at sea for two Honolulu women.



Things got off to an ominous start on day one of the trip when their cellphone washed overboard and sank into the sea.



Things got significantly worse for the two women - who have since been identified by the Navy as Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava, of Honolulu.



In May, about a month into their trip, treacherous weather conditions caused their engine to lose power, but the pair believed they could still reach Tahiti using their sails.



Their mast had been damaged, and as they drifted across thousands of miles of open ocean, their water purifier temporarily stopped working and they became a target for sharks.



The pair sent out daily distress calls that no one heard, and were finally rescued by the U.S. Navy on Wednesday about 900 miles southeast of Japan.



'When I saw the grey boat on the edge of the horizon, my heart leaped because I knew that we were about to be saved, because I honestly believed we were going to die within the next 24 hours,' Appel said, on Friday morning's Today show.



The USS Ashland rescued the women after a Taiwanese fishing vessel spotted their crippled vessel Tuesday and alerted the U.S. Coast Guard, the Navy said in a statement released Thursday. 



'They saved our lives,' said Appel through the Navy release. 'The pride and smiles we had when we saw (U.S. Navy) on the horizon was pure relief.'



In a phone call with news media from the Ashland, Appel said they had sent a distress signal for 98 days with no response.



'It was very depressing and very hopeless, but it's the only thing you can do, so you do what you can do,' she said, according to an audio recording of the call.



'I could see light and I could see vessels and I watched them get closer and we thought it would be close enough to do a call or, if it was pointed our way, we would shoot flairs and hail it on a VHF,' Fuiava said on Today.



'When they would turn or keep going — yeah, it was kind of sad.'



A group of sharks attacked their boat one night, and a single shark returned a day later.



'We actually thought it was lights out, and they were horrific. We were just incredibly lucky that our hull was strong enough to withstand the onslaught', Appel said.



'I went downstairs with the boys and we basically laid huddled on the floor and I told them not to bark, because the sharks could hear us breathing. They could smell us', Appel revealed on Today.



When asked if they ever thought they might not survive, she said they would not be human if they did not. She credited the two dogs, which she called their companion animals, with keeping their spirits up.



'There is a true humility to wondering if today is your last day, if tonight is your last night,' she said.



Appel's mother told The Associated Press Thursday that she never gave up hope that her daughter would be found.



Joyce Appel, 75, who lives in Houston, said she got a call from her daughter early Thursday morning more than 5 months after they had 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 her 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 a 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.' In that time, the elder Appel moved and got a new phone number and was worried her daughter wouldn't know where to call.



'I knew she didn't even know the phone number here,' she said.



'I had hope all along, she is very resourceful and she's curious and as things break she tries to repair them, she doesn't sit and wait for the repairman to get there, so I knew the same thing would be true of the boat.'



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.



When the women attempted distress calls, 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 a water purifier and enough food for a year, mostly dried goods like oatmeal and pasta.