PO‘IPU — One Kalaheo resident remains missing and another was rescued after an overturned kayak stranded the two almost a half-mile offshore of Po‘ipu yesterday afternoon. A 36-year-old woman was retrieved by rescuers and taken to Wilcox Memorial Hospital conscious,
PO‘IPU — One Kalaheo resident remains missing and another was rescued after an overturned kayak stranded the two almost a half-mile offshore of Po‘ipu yesterday afternoon.
A 36-year-old woman was retrieved by rescuers and taken to Wilcox Memorial Hospital conscious, but her husband, also 36, had not been located as of 8 p.m. yesterday, according to the Coast Guard.
Officials said Coast Guard crews would continue searching for the missing man through the night using an HH-65 Dolphin helicopter.
Firefighters from the Koloa fire station, lifeguards from Po‘ipu Beach and Inter-Island helicopter Air-1 initially responded to reports around 2:40 p.m. that two kayakers had been separated from their vessel.
The red kayak was immediately spotted from the air, and officials used shore sightings to locate the woman in the water.
According to police scanner traffic, the woman said she and her husband had been thrown from the kayak due to rough winds and couldn’t get back in or hold onto it. Later the man became unable to float on his back, and the woman let go of him.
She reported seeing him slip below the surface and shortly thereafter began swimming toward the beach. After about 20 minutes without any noticeable progress, rescuers located her.
“She was dead tired and outside the big breakers,” said Ken D’atillio, Inter-Island owner and the first pilot to respond. “It didn’t look like she could tread water much longer.”
The woman was brought to land and transported to the hospital around 3:15 p.m.
The county asked the Coast Guard to assist at 3:30 p.m. A Zodiac stationed on Kaua‘i arrived first and dropped a life-sized dummy in the area where the couple were stranded to assess current and drift patterns; the Coast Guard chopper arrived within an hour of the request.
The search continued into the evening for the man.
Inter-Island and county officials plan to resume their search this morning barring a Coast Guard rescue or recovery in the interim.
