Woman struggled to keep
hope while lost at sea
WAILUKU >> What began as a canoe paddle with a friend off West Maui on Wednesday turned into a harrowing, 14-mile nighttime swim to Molokai for a Valley Isle woman.
"There were times when I wanted to give up. I said to myself: 'You can't. You're a survivor,'" Kimberly Dovre said yesterday from her bed at Molokai General Hospital.
Dovre, 32, a banquet server at the Westin Maui Resort, was planning to be discharged from the hospital and return to her home in Lahaina last night, said her friend Kelly Keahi.
Dovre, interviewed by telephone, said she felt "pretty beaten up and sore" and could not move her right arm because of all the swimming in 3- to 4-foot seas. She said she was drinking liquids and had an intravenous tube connected to her to help in her recovery.
Police Sgt. Derrick Delos Santos said Dovre was being treated for exhaustion and hypothermia.
Dovre, a former member of the Kahana Canoe Club and Hawaiian Canoe Club, said she and Keahi had gone paddling in a two-person canoe off Napili Bay in West Maui on Wednesday afternoon when 4-foot waves began hitting the vessel.
Dovre said the steering broke, and Keahi got out of the canoe to try turn it into the wave when one of the waves crashed and separated them.
Dovre said she stayed on the canoe and assumed Keahi went to get help.
Keahi swam to shore, and fire officials received a call for help at 3:10 p.m. Wednesday.
"I kept thinking in the first hour or two, they were going to come to get me," Dovre said.
Dovre said no help came, and she had drifted out to sea in 4- to 5-foot swells that complicated the search for her, and the current was pulling her toward Molokai.
Dovre said that about 5 p.m. the canoe was starting to sink in the channel. She said she was forced to tread water and swim with the current toward Molokai.
She said she saw the searchlight of a helicopter looking for her elsewhere.
"It just seemed like no one was looking for me in the right direction," she said. "They assumed I was nearer to Lanai."
In the darkness, she could see objects on the southeast shore of Molokai.
"I could see a water tower, then as I got closer, I could see Christmas tree lights at someone's house," she said.
Police said Dovre touched shore at Kamalo in southeastern Molokai about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Dovre said that once on shore, she saw a light from a house and approached a home.
"I was so tired and starting to get hypothermia," she said. "I asked the man for some clothes."
Dovre said during the 6 1/2-hour swim, she became so exhausted she wondered if she would survive. "A couple of times, I was really worried. But I didn't have a choice."