As Hurricane Gilma raged in the Pacific, the Coast Guard in Hawaii received a distress call from a sailboat left stranded by the storm.
The boat was 925 miles east of Honolulu, and the rescue mission took several days, with the help of the Coast Guard and the US Navy.
When rescuers arrived, they found a woman, her daughter, their pets and a dead man authorities said was the vessel’s master.
Responding to the call
Officials at the Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu received a distress alert from the sailboat around 12:33 p.m. local time on Saturday, according to a news release from the Coast Guard.
An airplane crew was able to locate the French-flagged vessel Albroc and heard a mayday call from the woman on board. The mother and daughter are both French, according to a Coast Guard spokesperson.
The woman, 47, said she and her daughter, 7, a cat and a tortoise needed to be rescued after the weather caused them to become stranded.
While the crew onboard the plane couldn’t make direct contact with the woman, they did see her launch two flares. At the time, the waves were up to 6 feet and winds were at 20 mph, the Coast Guard reported.
Additional crews from the Navy were requested by the Coast Guard to assist with the rescue mission.
On Sunday around 9 a.m., the woman and daughter were seen waving their arms onboard the boat by an airplane crew launched nearby. “The aircrew unsuccessfully attempted to communicate with the two boaters by hailing them on the radio and dropping message blocks,” the Coast Guard said.
Later in the evening, around 5:20 p.m., a tanker crew arrived near the boat but were unable to rescue the woman and daughter due to the weather conditions from Hurricane Gilma.
A Navy crew reaches the sailboat
Finally, around 5 a.m. Monday, the USS William P. Lawrence, a guided-missile destroyer, arrived at the scene and the rescue mission began. Due to the condition of the sailboat and the weather, crews only had a six-hour window to safely rescue the woman and child.
A small boat crew was able to launch from the Navy ship and make contact with the sailboat, leading to the rescue.
The Navy ship arrived at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu on Wednesday evening, where the mother and daughter received care.
The body of the man who died was unable to be recovered due to weather conditions and the sailboat remains off the coast nearly 1,000 miles east of Honolulu, the Coast Guard said.
The man’s cause of death and the reasons behind why they were out on the boat in the path of the hurricane is still under investigation, a spokesperson with the Coast Guard told CNN Friday afternoon.
At the time of the rescue operations by the USS Lawrence, Hurricane Gilma was located approximately 480 miles east of the vessels and had a maximum sustained wind of 110 mph near the center of the storm, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers reported.
After the recovery, Gilma continued to move westward toward the last known position of the sailboat and came within 100 miles of the vessel with sustained winds of 60 mph.
“Through tireless planning, coordination and teamwork, our watchstanders pieced together the key elements needed for such a dynamic search and rescue case,” search and rescue mission coordinator Kevin Cooper said, “We are grateful the Seri Emperor and William P. Lawrence were able to reach the mother and daughter, who were caught right in the path of Hurricane Gilma.”
CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers contributed to this report.
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