What started out as harmless swimming, almost ended in tragedy when two teenage girls got swept away into the sea after getting caught in a riptide. It was fortunate that a group of fishermen saw them and helped them get back to shore.
Boat captain Michael Arujo and his crew were out at sea near Monterey Bay when they came across two figures swimming near their fishing boat. At first, the men thought they were looking at sea otters but as they came nearer, they realized that they were mistaken.
Two girls were swimming for their lives.
“I look and I think I see otters right,” Michael recalled to FOX26.
What looked like a couple of sea otters from afar were actually two teenage girls who were swimming and fighting for their lives. They were too far from the shore and were trying to get back to safety, but they were unsuccessful.
It was unusual for people to swim that far from shore, so the fisherman decided to turn back and ask:
“Are you guys ok, or, are you guys in trouble?”
The girls responded in a fainting voice, “No, we need help.”
The fishermen were thankful to have seen the girls before anything bad could have happened.
When the fishermen heard about the trouble, they knew they needed to do something right away. The men approached the teens and got them out of the cold, cold water.
Upon reaching the girls’ location, the men immediately pulled them aboard and back to safety.
As soon as the teens knew they were safe and out of the water, they finally gave in to the exhaustion and just sat weakly on the floor.
“They were really in bad shape. Neither one of them could stand when we got them on the boat. They really didn’t have a lot of time left,” Bill Weilbacher, another one of the fishermen, said.
It was evident that the teens were quite relieved and that the fishermen were thankful for being at the right time and place.
“It was amazing we saw them,” says Michael. “Yeah, they were so small. They were two little heads in the water.”
It started out as an unlucky day for the fishermen, but they realized they were there for a reason.
That day, the fishermen were having a rough day at sea. There were not catching anything so they sailed around, hoping to get more fish. As they explored the area, that was the moment where they saw the girls swimming about a mile away from shore.
“We got there at the right time. Yeah, it was a miracle. It was a miracle,” Michael told FOX26.
The girls, who were caught in a riptide, were very determined to survive. They swam for about 30 minutes in the 53-degree water, not giving up until finally, help came in the form of the fishermen.
Michael told ABC7:
“Thank God we were there because there was nobody behind us, and there was no boats coming out. It would have took about at least half an hour to get there, and in that water, you can’t last 10 minutes.”
After being rescued, the teens were brought back to shore and to the safety of their families. They were treated with the help of the Monterey Bay Coast Guard and paramedics.
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