LIHU’E – A friend’s familiarity with his fishing habits and an expanded aerial Coast Guard search saved the life of Amos Tamura, a Wailua fisherman who drifted out to sea on a disabled boat last Wednesday. He was found more
LIHU’E – A friend’s familiarity with his fishing habits and an expanded aerial Coast Guard search saved the life of Amos Tamura, a Wailua fisherman who drifted out to sea on a disabled boat last Wednesday. He was found more than 50 miles west of Kaua’i two days later.
Before a Coast Guard C-130 airplane spotted Tamura on top of the overturned double hull of the 22-foot pleasure craft Kidaly shortly after 5 p.m. last Friday, Tamura was in dire straits.
“There was no water – I was drinking salt water. No food. There was the blazing hot sun,” Tamura said. “From Wednesday until Friday, when I was found, I prayed and hoped somebody would call the Coast Guard.” Had Tamura not been rescued, the boat would have drifted deeper into international shipping lanes.
But with information on Tamura’s fishing habits provided by longtime friend Sterlyn Shimabukuro, the Coast Guard expanded its search and found Tamura.
Following his rescue, Tamura underwent treatment for hypothermia, cuts on his body and legs and dehydration at Kaua’i Veterans Memorial Hospital. He was released Monday.
Before the start of his ill-fated fishing trip, Tamura informed Shimabukuro about his plans. Then he launched from Nawiliwili Harbor at 4:15 a.m. Wednesday.
In waters off Kalaheo at 5:40 a.m., Tamura hooked three ahi -one weighing 190 pounds, another weighing 160 and a third 180 pounds. Tamura brought the first two fish aboard the boat but lost the third.
At 8:30 a.m., he hooked a marlin at a depth of about 9,000 feet. At the end of a three-hour battle with the fish, he had positioned it about 100 feet from the boat, he said.
After discovering the marlin could weigh as much as 700 pounds, Tamura said, he called a fellow fishermen, who was 15 miles away, to help him bring the marlin aboard the Kidaly. His friend, however, never reached him.
At noon, Tamura said, he stopped the boat about 15 miles from Port Allen. He gaffed the marlin, killed it with a bat and tied it to the starboard side of the boat to balance the vessel. Earlier, he had put the two ahi on the port side of the boat.
Then the unthinkable happened, Tamura said.
Shortly past noon, as he went back toward the back of the boat, water surged through a gate in the back that allows access to the engines. The water filled two boxes used to store the fish, and the boat listed to the port side, Tamura said.
He took evasive action, starting up the engine and activating bilges to try to keep the boat moving and to displace water.
But water kept coming in. The motor sputtered and the boat began rolling sideways, Tamura said. In less than a minute, the boat rolled over on its side.
“It happened all at once, ” he said. “I didn’t have time to act, but I wasn’t panicked. I remained calm.” Tamura said there wasn’t time to activate emergency equipment aboard the craft, including an emergency radio beacon and a cellular phone.
To prevent being injured by debris, Tamura dove away from the boat. Once it stabilized, Tamura climbed back on the overturned boat.
For the next seven hours, he dove in repeatedly to try to find the emergency beacon and activate it. After sunset, he gave up and stayed on the hull.
From 7 p.m. Wednesday to after 5 p.m. Friday, the disabled craft drifted toward Japan, Tamura said. In the meantime, he prayed he would be spotted by search planes.
After he was, a Coast Guard helicopter hoisted him from the boat and took him to Barking Sands in West Kaua’i. Both Coast Guard aircraft from Barber’s Point assisted in the search and rescue mission.
The Kidaly was reported overdue at 10 p.m.
Thursday at Nawiliwili Harbor, two hours after it was due back.
The rescue operation was delayed due to a technicality. A friend of Tamura’s, Danny Pilila’au, at the apparent urging of Tamura’s mother, called the Coast Guard when Tamura didn’t return by Wednesday night, said Vicky Tamura, his wife. But the Coast Guard couldn’t begin the search until the actual owner of the boat, Stuart Yoneji, a friend who let Tamura use it, reported the boat was overdue, Vicky Tamura said.
A Coast Guard helicopter from Barber’s Point began the search early Friday morning off the east, south and west shores of Kaua’i. Two subsequent helicopter searches searches were conducted the same day.
Vicky Tamura flew back from Michigan to help with her husband’s recovery. The construction worker for R.W. Butler Associates in Kilauea is planning a move to Ludington, Wis., where his wife works as an x-ray technician.
Tamura said he will be fishing for trout in the Great Lakes. He has a lifelong passion for fishing, mostly in Hawai’i, and he laments not being able to fish here any more.
But last week’s incident will remain with him for a long time, Tamura said.
“It is the first time I was aboard a boat that got in trouble like this. I will remember it,” he said.
Staff writer Lester Chang can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) and lchang@pulitzer.net
