Diver OK after After losing his boat, floating for more than 24 hours in the ocean and fighting the current, diver Michael Splittstoesser swam ashore yesterday afternoon at Mokuleia Beach Park.
a day fighting
sea swells
A scuba fisherman swims
By Leila Fujimori
safely ashore after losing
his boat off Kaena Point
Star-BulletinThe 33-year-old Hawaii Kai man embraced his wife, Lisa, in an emotional reunion at the beach. Lisa Splittstoesser had feared her husband dead after his boat had been discovered at 8:30 a.m. yesterday.
"I always had some hope," Lisa Splittstoesser said, pausing to fight back the tears. "But the most devastating part was when I boarded the boat and saw his lunch hadn't been eaten and his coffee mug was full.
"I knew he had been in the water for 24 hours."
But Michael, a professional diver whom Lisa described as "very laid back," never lost his cool and said he just enjoyed watching the fish. That positive attitude contributed to a happy ending, said Phil Camero, police missing-persons detective, who called the story a miracle.
"Everyone from the fire chief to the rescue captain to the Coast Guard are totally amazed," Camero said. He credits the diver's buoyancy compensator, which looks like a life vest, with saving his life.
Splittstoesser, 33, was diving off his boat Saturday morning near Kaena Point for tropical fish, which he collects for a living.
When he returned at noon to the spot where his 18-foot fishing vessel had been anchored, all that remained were anchor tracks on the ocean floor. Splittstoesser followed the tracks but could not chase down the boat.
By the time he decompressed and surfaced, 30 minutes had passed, and Splittstoesser saw no signs of the boat. "The chances of getting picked up were quite good, but it just didn't pan out," Splittstoesser said.
The area is usually teeming with fishing boats Saturdays, and he hoped someone would see him. Though he spotted two boats, no one saw him bobbing amid the 3- to 4-foot swells.
"I just filled up the BC (buoyancy compensator) and floated," he said. "I figured I had to wait till the following morning till someone would come get me."
He cut loose the few angel and butterfly fish he had caught.
Then, sometime between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., Splittstoesser dropped his scuba tanks and weights and started swimming to avoid being swept out to sea by the current. He rounded Kaena Point heading toward the north shore of the island.
At about the same time, Lisa Splittstoesser sensed something was wrong when her husband did not call. She made several calls to him starting at 8 p.m.
"At 10 p.m. I drove to Waianae looking up and down the coast." She called police and the Coast Guard at 1 a.m., and a search began after sunrise yesterday.
Splittstoesser phoned her husband's dive friend early yesterday morning to stake out his favorite dive spots.
Her husband's truck and trailer were found at the Waianae boat harbor.
The Coast Guard and police sent out helicopters, and the fire department dispatched its rescue boat with divers yesterday morning.
Then, at 8:30 a.m., Splittstoesser's boat was spotted about a half-mile off Kaena Point by William Aila, Waianae Boat Harbor master. Firefighters brought in the boat. It was intact -- the radio still on, the anchor dropped.
Splittstoesser swam to shore at Mokuleia Beach Park at about 2:30 p.m., about 28 hours after he first entered the water Saturday morning. He borrowed a cellular phone and called his wife at their Hawaii Kai home. She contacted police and rushed to the park.
Lisa, a doctor, examined him and said, "His tongue looks a little furry, but he looks really good and a lot better than I thought he would."
"This was the most horrible experience of my entire life and the happiest day of my life."