Woman tells of 19-hour ocean ordeal

A woman told today how she stayed afloat for 19 hours in the Pacific Ocean clutching a water container until she was rescued.

Lillian Simpson, 49, said her canoe flipped in strong winds about a mile off the Hawaiian coast. She could not restore the canoe, tried to swim to shore, but failed.

“The times I thought: ’I’m going to die, I’m going to die’. I would say: ’No, I have three kids and you’re not taking me anywhere’,” she told the Maui News.

Simpson spent a long night dozing off, accidentally swallowing sea water, being sick and trying to keep warm by wrapping her bathing suit top around her head.

By the time Joseph Carvalho, captain of the boat Strike Zone, found Simpson on Friday, she could not remember her name.

“She told me that she kept telling herself: ’At least the water’s warm’,” Carvalho said.

“Your survival instinct kicks in. She made something out of nothing and that saved her life.”

A dehydrated and sunburned Simpson was treated at a hospital and released.

A buoy near where Simpson was floating registered an average water temperature of about 80 degrees (26.6 Celsius) this week, said National Weather Service forecaster Robert Ballard.