#Offshore - Two women have been rescued in the Pacific Ocean after a dream voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti turned into a months-long nightmare, as RTÉ News reports.
Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiaba set out five months ago on their small sailing yacht headed south towards French Polynesia, a distance of some 3,200km.
Shortly into their voyage, they lost the use of their engine and decided to carry on by sail towards landfall.
With no land in sight by the end of July, the pair started to issue distress calls — but being too far from any other vessels or stations, those calls went unanswered.
It wasn’t until this past Tuesday (24 October) that a Taiwanese fishing boat notified US authorities that it had found Appel and Fuiaba, and their two dogs, in the Philippine Sea between Japan and Guam — thousands of nautical miles off course.
The US Navy subsequently posted a video of their rescue of the women, who survived their ordeal thanks to bringing with them more a year’s supply of food along with water purifyers.
RTÉ News has more on the story HERE.
