Seafaring family
grateful for rescueBoaters in Monday's incident
could have died, say lifeguards
LIHUE >> A man whose inflatable boat capsized inside a cave on the Na Pali coast Monday thanked lifeguards in Hanalei yesterday for saving his family.
"He was as embarrassed as he was grateful," chuckled lifeguard Mark McKarney.
McKarney, who drove the personal watercraft used in the rescue, and Chris Pico, his "grabber" who rode the sled, agreed it was the most difficult rescue either had ever imagined. They credited training on the watercraft in heavy winter surf with making the rescue possible.
The people in the boat -- a middle-age Kauai couple, their grown son and his wife -- were trapped on rocks in the back of Two Door Cave near Hanakapiai after their boat flipped. The cave is a tour stop in the summer when the sea is flat but is considered dangerous when there is a north swell.
"It was a heavy situation," Pico said. "It was like surfing big waves. It's scary at first, and you wonder what you're going to do but once you're in it, it's kind of fun."
McKarney wasn't as sure that it was fun at all. At one point he was thrown off the watercraft inside the cave. Another time, with one of the victims aboard, a wave broke inside the cave. "The nose of the ski missed the ceiling of the cave by inches. That ceiling is 20 feet high," McKarney said.
They were helped by an off-duty lifeguard, Gavin Kennelly, who just happened by, and a former lifeguard, Liko Hookano, who was operating a tour boat and stayed in the area to pick up the victims as they were brought out.
The lifeguards said the four people probably would eventually have died of hypothermia because it was impossible to see them from the outside.
By chance, a flare from their boat floated to the rocks, and they fired it out one of the cave doors. A passing tour boat saw it and called the Coast Guard, which in turn called the county lifeguards. It took the two lifeguards about 25 minutes to reach the cave from Hanalei.
"I've never seen it like that. The waves were crashing against the ceiling. There was white water everywhere. The people were on boulders way in the back, and we only had a few seconds between waves to run in and get each one."
"Swimming out through the surf, they were scared," Pico said. "But they were good swimmers. They did really good considering the situation."