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COURTESY HAWAII FIRE DEPARTMENT
An unidentified man with the sailboat Mimsy, which Hawaii Island firefighters towed back to shore Tuesday after the boater lost power and steering.
Hawaii island firefighters rescued a mariner today after his sailboat became disabled and he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for three days.
The man contacted the Coast Guard this morning, saying the motor failed on his 26-foot sailboat Mimsy and he was still about 11 miles northeast of Hawaii island, said Battalion Chief Gerald Kosaki.
He was only able to communicate via marine radio with the Coast Guard who relayed the information to the Fire Department.
The man was travelling about 1 mph toward Hilo under wind power.
Firefighters typically do not tow vessels larger than their 23-foot boat and decided to allow the man to approach closer to shore under wind power, Kosaki said.
Several hours later, the Coast Guard told firefighters that the man said his tiller broke and he was drifting in the water.
The Coast Guard launched a cutter from Oahu and said estimated it would take about 10 hours to reach the man. A vessel on Hawaii island apparently was undergoing maintenance.
One hour later, the Coast Guard called firefighters and asked if they could deliver supplies to the man because he reported he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in three days.
Instead of dropping off food and leaving the man at sea, firefighters towed the man back to Hilo Bay Tuesday afternoon from about three miles off shore, Kosaki said.
It was unknown what caused the man’s motor to fail or where he came from or where he was going.
Kosaki said the man was in good spirits and not hurt.
It was the second time the Mimsy was rescued in the Pacific in two months.
On March 17, the vessel was disabled and adrift with one mariner aboard about 30 miles off shore near San Francisco, according to a Coast Guard news release.
The mariner called for help and reported the vessel lost its rigging during a recent storm. A Coast Guard rescue boat crew towed the boat back to Monterey, Calif.
He didn’t stock pile food and water when going out on the ocean!?……
Judging by the article, this was a Transpac crossing and evidently he ran into difficulties somewhere near the end of his voyage. It takes a long time to get anywhere at 1 mph, and there aren’t any floating 7-11s between here and SF. Sounds as if everyone did the right thing and this had a happy ending.
“Happy Ending” You meant to say the rescue turned out well. Wink, Wink!
The single-handed TransPac doesn’t start until July 2, 2016 and the last TransPac was in 2015 and is held every other year (next one is 2017).
Maybe it was another race Mimsy was participating in, but to have two rescues in a year is sketch.
Glad he is safe
Never the less he should have had a emergency food supply along with a desalination unit…doesn’t seem he was prepared……..
I love happy endings.
“He hadn’t eaten or “drunk” anything”…. Maybe it should have been printed as hadn’t eaten or “drank” anything….
It does look wrong, doesn’t it, I thought so too.
I found this on the inter web.
Ok, so as an English teacher, I know that in the present and past perfect tenses, the auxiliary verb have is followed by the past participle form of the verb.
Using most verbs, I find that this is true for all sentences I have heard. However, on several instances, I have run into a native speaker using the past form of the verb (drank) where the grammar calls for the past participle (drunk).
For example: “I hadn’t drank any coffee before I lived in Italy.”
According to grammar norms, this sentence should be: “I hadn’t drunk any coffee…”
More and more, I noticed that people tend to use drank instead of drunk after perfect aspect constructions. This construction was used across all communities of practice and wasn’t subject to dialect boundaries.
Well, the heading of the article was revised.
Mimsy needs to pay for rescues. Two rescue operations in two months is suspicious.
Three days without “food and water”? “Mariner”? Head-out to Sea without a backup of Drinking Water? It appears he was just a lonely old man and wanted attention (Dementia/Alzheimer’s(?)) Plenty of “fish in the ocean”(?).
Don’t you recognize who he is? Why that is Alan Hale (the Skipper from Giligan’s Island). It was only supposed to be a “three hour tour”.
Twice??
Make him pay. He’s clearly stupid
Better yet, we are stupid to keep rescuing this guy
bill him please……….
With a name like ” Mimsy ” anything is possible.
Some ham radio operators in Hawaii had radio shortwave contact with this person a couple of weeks ago and he said he was in trouble then, maybe 250 miles away from big island. So did those hams contact USCG? The article does not mention anything like that. I don’t care what kind of a person it is, if they are in trouble, we help them. Especially mariners of any kine!!! But I am more interested to hear if the hams followed up. There are lots of protocols in these situations. Was there a stumble? Did the hams call the USCG right away, get the professionals involved?
Eh Skippah, probably next time you pack a reel (9/0 at least) with pole and some Aku skirts and you won’t go hungry!