HONOLULU -- The U.S. Coast Guard said Monday that the two Hawaii women who were lost at sea for five months had an emergency beacon aboard their sailboat that was never activated.
U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Scott Carr told The Associated Press that their review of what happened and subsequent interviews with the survivors revealed that they had the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon aboard but never turned it on.
Parts of their story have been called into question, including the tropical storm the two say they encountered on their first night at sea in May. National Weather Service records show no organized storms in the region in early May.
When asked if the two had the radio beacon aboard, the women told the AP on Friday they had a number of other communications devices, but they didn't mention the beacon.
The device communicates with satellites and sends locations to authorities. It's activated when it's submerged in water or turned on manually.
During the post-incident debriefing by the Coast Guard, Jennifer Appel, who was on the sailboat with Tasha Fuiava, was asked if she had the emergency beacon on board. Appel replied she did, and that it was properly registered.
"We asked why during this course of time did they not activate the [beacon]. She had stated they never felt like they were truly in distress, like in a 24-hour period they were going to die," said Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer 2nd Class Tara Molle, who was on the call to the AP with Carr.
However, in a phone call to the media shortly after her rescue, Appel said they had sent a distress signal for 98 days with no response.
A retired Coast Guard officer who was responsible for search and rescue operations said that if the women had used the emergency beacon, they would have been found.
"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," Phillip Johnson said Monday in a telephone interview from Washington state.
The beacons are solid and built to be suddenly dropped in the ocean. "Failures are really rare," Johnson said, but added that old and weak batteries also could cause a unit not to work.
Appel said she lost her phone overboard the first day at sea, and the women said they had at least five other forms of communication that all went dead. The women also had told the Navy that although they expected the voyage to take just a few weeks, they packed enough food for a year and a water purifier.
"There's something wrong there," Johnson said.
A Section on 10/31/2017