Sgt. William Kelley comforts Steve Fonnesbeck, who was too overcome to identify the body of his diving partner, missing since last night. After searching, a Fire Department diver today found the body in a cove off Portlock Point.
Photo by Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Brian Tice, 30, stationed at Hickam Air Force Base, was diving with another man when they surfaced and couldn't find their inflatable boat at about 6:30 p.m.
They tried to swim for shore amid strong winds and currents.
Tice's diving partner, Steve Fonnesbeck, 37, a Navy man, was plucked from the water unharmed shortly after 7 p.m., said Hawaii Kai fire Capt. Fred Tom.
The Coast Guard searched into the night and continued this morning.
Rescuers aboard the Honolulu Fire Department boat spotted the body's neon green fins in the water just before 7 a.m. in a cove below Poipu Place, off Portlock Road. A diver retrieved the body and brought it to nearby shelf, from where a rescue helicopter lifted the body to Koko Kai Beach Park.
The two military men apparently got into trouble when they became separated from their boat, Tom said.
Fonnesbeck managed to get close to shore and call for help.
Robin Peterson, who lives in an ocean-front home at the end of Poipu Drive, was meditating when she heard his faint plea.
"I heard a whisper, 'God, please help me,'" Peterson said. A couple of minutes later, she heard it again. "I thought I was hearing things," she said.
But she called 911.
"I think I saved his life," she said.
Meanwhile, the parents of three Oahu teen-agers probably don't know how lucky they are that their sons are alive.
That's because the boys, all 17, don't want their moms and dads to know how they swam to safety - miraculously, as one witness put it - after being swept hundreds of yards to sea just to the north off Portlock earlier yesterday.
The boys, from Honolulu and Windward Oahu, were among a group of about 10 friends enjoying a private school holiday at "Spitting Caves," the popular but dangerous cliff-jumping spot a few hundred yards north of where Fonnesbeck was rescued last night.
John Ebert, whose home overlooks the spot between Portlock Point and Hanauma Bay - and who has made countless 911 calls on behalf of hapless jumpers - wants to get the word out that the waters below the unguarded cliff are as tumultuous as the name implies.
He said seven people have died at the site since he moved there in 1979, either by falling, being swept out to sea or poorly executing a dive from the more than 40-foot-high perch.
The cul-de-sac in front of his Lumahai Street home has been used to lower the bodies of victims from helicopter into rescue vehicles, he said.
Luckily, not yesterday.
But the boys' fun turned to terror when one of the jumpers was ejected by the frothy waters into the open ocean. Two friends went after him, and within minutes the current pulled the threesome some 300 yards out to sea, eventually taking them westward around the point and nearly to China Wall.
"We just let the current take us," said one of the boys.
The tide deposited them less than 100 yards from shore in Maunalua Bay, and they swam to safety on their own as rescue crews were arriving just after 12:51 p.m., fire Capt. Tom said.
The teens did not require medical attention.
Spitting Caves was the scene of another rescue attempt a little more than two months ago, when the Fire Department's helicopter was used to pull a 19-year-old man and 16-year-old boy from the rough waters.
As he did yesterday, Ebert made the 911 call that got rescuers to the scene then. He said he and his wife average about one call to rescuers a month. They've been thanked once, he said.
Although the sea is sometimes calmer at the jumping spot than it was yesterday, Ebert said he has a hard time imagining why anyone would take what seems to be an obvious risk. "Maybe it's some sort of rite of passage that they have to perform in front of their peers, and they pay a big price for it."