Kayaker, 61, saved after powerful storm

When Jill Lee and her friend, Moo Kanaio, showed up at Olowalu for a day of kayaking in the ocean off West Maui on Sunday morning, her weather app indicated it would be a beautiful, calm day.

And it was “a perfect day,” Lee said, but by late afternoon a sudden and powerful squall separated the two and pushed Lee’s pink kayak out to sea. Large waves engulfed her slender vessel, flipping it over and filling it with water.

“I really didn’t think I was going to make it,” she said Monday after leaving Maui Memorial Medical Center in Wailuku. “I thought I was going to die.”

But the 61-year-old massage therapist, grandmother and part-time Maui resident from Kihei did not give up.

Following some nine hours of desperate paddling and then swimming in the night toward land, she finally made it back to the reef off Olowalu, where she was helped ashore by Coast Guard ocean rescuers and others on the beach.

On shore, a battered, bruised and dehydrated Lee declined to be transported to the hospital and instead drove herself home. Later, still not feeling so well, she went to the hospital, where she was hooked to an IV and treated for jellyfish stings.

“I kept thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m still alive,’” said Lee, an avid kayaker, swimmer and diver.

The Coast Guard responded with a 45-foot boat from Coast Guard Station Maui, an MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew from Air Station Barbers Point and the cutter Galveston Island from Honolulu. Maui Fire Department crews also joined the search.

Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Thomas Geary said Lee’s friend called authorities at about 7:20 p.m., after coming ashore and looking for her, thinking she might have paddled in on her own.

The woman was finally located by radar in the dark by the outline of her kayak at 12:45 a.m., Geary said

“It made all the difference that someone knew she was out on the water (and) cared enough about her to call it in,” Geary said. He said it also helped that she had the good sense to stay with her kayak.

Weather on the scene during the search was reported as 20 mph winds, with heavy rain and 3-foot seas, officials said.

Lt. Brock Blaisdell, search and rescue coordinator at Coast Guard Sector Honolulu, said Lee was prepared and familiar with the limitations of her kayak in ocean conditions. A good attitude, along with wearing a proper life jacket, was crucial to Lee surviving the ordeal, he said.

Lee, who lives part time in Oregon, said she and Kanaio paddled far out into the channel Sunday morning and were coming to shore in the afternoon when they were distracted by a pod of whales.

That’s when the storm hit with winds of 30 to 35 knots, and the two were separated.

Lee worked desperately not to lose sight of land.

“I had to work constantly to survive,” she recalled. “I was paddling with all my might. I kept saying, ‘No one’s going to save you but you.’”

As it was growing dark, the waves flipped over the kayak. She lost a fin, her shoes and her food, but she grabbed her life jacket and goggles and was able to put them on. She tried to turn the kayak back over, but it was impossible.

She decided not to let go of the kayak, viewing it as security against sharks or whatever else might get to her in the night.

Lee said she could occasionally see lights on shore and she kept swimming, though she could feel herself growing weaker. At one point, she was close enough to land to see some houses and she let out some screams, Lee said, but no one saw or heard her.

Eventually, she felt the edge of the Olowalu reef, and just as she was working to get to an opening for the beach, the Coast Guard found her and helped her ashore, she said.

“I was so weak, and they were so nice,” she said.