Doubts cast on sailors' incredible tale of survival as new details emerge

A US Coast Guard has said two Hawaiian women who claim they were lost at sea for five months never activated their emergency beacon, adding to a list of inconsistencies that cast doubt on their harrowing tale of survival.

Coast Guard spokesman Lt Scott Carr said interviews with survivors Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava revealed that they had the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) aboard but never turned it on.

The women said they chose not to activate the device because they never feared for their lives.

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 organised storms in the region at that time.

When asked if the two had the radio beacon aboard, the women said they had a number of other communications devices, but they didn't mention the EPIRB.

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 Appel 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 EPIRB. 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 spokeswoman Tara Molle.

Carr also said the Coast Guard made radio contact with a vessel that identified itself as the Sea Nymph in June near Tahiti, and the captain said they were not in distress and expected to make land the next morning. That was after the women reportedly lost their engines and sustained damage to their rigging and mast.

Experts say some of the details of the women's story do not add up.

A retired Coast Guard officer who was responsible for search and rescue operations said that if the women 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 R. Johnson said on Monday.

The women also said they had six forms of communication that all went dead. "There's something wrong there," Johnson said.

"I've never heard of all that stuff going out at the same time," he said.

Key elements of the women's account are contradicted by authorities, weather reports and the basic geography of the Pacific Ocean. The discrepancies raised questions about whether Appel and her sailing companion, Tasha Fuiava, remember the ordeal accurately or could have avoided disaster.

The Hawaii residents reported that their sailing equipment and engine failed and said they were close to giving up when the U.S. Navy rescued them last week, thousands of miles off course. They were taken to Japan, where they didn't immediately respond to an email and call seeking comment Monday.

The two women met in late 2016, and within a week of knowing each other decided to take the trip together. Fuiava had never sailed a day in her life. They planned to take 18 days to get to Tahiti, then travel the South Pacific and return to Hawaii in October.

After leaving "we got into a Force 11 storm, and it lasted for two nights and three days," Appel said of the storm they encountered off Oahu. In one of the first signs of trouble, she said she lost her cellphone overboard.

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"We were empowered to know that we could withstand the forces of nature," Appel said. "The boat could withstand the forces of nature."

But the National Weather Service in Honolulu said no organised storm systems were in or near Hawaii on May 3 or in the days afterward.

"I had no idea that we were going to be in this thing for 80 solid hours," Appel said of the storm of which there is no record.

Days later, after parts of their mast and rigging failed, they sailed up to another small island, still with a working motor, but decided against trying to land, believing the island was mostly uninhabited with no protected waters.

"It is uninhabited. They only have habitation on the northwest corner and their reef was too shallow for us to cross in order to get into the lagoon," Appel said.

But Christmas Island, part of the island nation of Kiribati, is home to more than 2,000 people and has a port that routinely welcomes huge commercial ships.

"We could probably nurse it down to the next major island in Kiribati," Appel said. Then we'll be able to stop there and seek safe haven and get up on the mast and fix it."

The island has at least two airfields, and women had flares aboard to alert people on land. Plus, its widest point spans about 48 kilometres, a day's hike to safety from even the most remote area.

When asked if the small island would have been a good place to land and repair their sails, Appel said no. "Kiribati, um, one whole half of the island is called shipwreck beach for a reason."

Then, they say, another storm killed their engine at the end of May. More than five months after they departed, they were picked up in the western Pacific about 900 miles (1,448 kilometers) southeast of Japan and thousands of miles off course. The two women and their dogs were all in good health when picked up by the U.S. Navy.