A story told by two women saved in the Pacific Ocean last week by the U.S. Navy appears to be falling apart under scrutiny by the U.S. Coast Guard, meteorologists and other specialists.
Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava were rescued Wednesday by the Navy after a planned trip from Hawaii to Tahiti went wrong. The two told authorities that storms and equipment malfunctions veered them off course — 900 miles southeast of Japan — but new details undermine their initial claims.
- The Coast Guard confirmed Tuesday that an emergency beacon was never activated.
- The women and their two dogs were in good health despite saying they would have died within 24 hours had they not been rescued.
- Meteorologists contradict the women’s story of severe weather along their route in early May.
- NASA satellite images show no tropical storms near Hawaii on May 3.
Phillip R. Johnson, a retired Coast Guard officer, told The Associated Press Monday that the pair should have activated their Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) if they were truly in distress.
“If the thing was operational and it was turned on, a signal should have been received very, very quickly that this vessel was in distress,” he said. “There’s something wrong there. I’ve never heard of [six forms of communication] going out at the same time.”
Ms. Appel told AP Tuesday that she did not use the emergency beacon for months because she never considered the predicament dire enough.
“Our hull was solid, we were floating, we had food, we had water, and we had limited maneuverable capacity,” she said in a phone interview from Japan. “All those things did not say we are going to die. All that said, it’s going to take us a whole lot longer to get where we’re going.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.