San diego: Rescuers plucked a seriously ill American baby girl and her family from a sailboat in the Pacific Ocean yesterday and transferred them to a US Navy frigate that will take them back to California, the US Coast Guard said.
The family was put into an inflatable raft then helped aboard the USS Vandegrift, which arrived early yesterday to rescue them from their crippled sailboat about 1,600km off Mexico’s Pacific coast, the Coast Guard said.
The San Diego family had been two weeks into a cruise around the world on an 11-metre vessel called the Rebel Heart when the youngest child developed a fever and rash, prompting her parents to send a satellite distress call to the Coast Guard on Thursday.
Eric and Charlotte Kaufman and their daughters, Cora, 3, and Lyra, 1, were in stable condition and would undergo further medical evaluations, the Coast Guard said in a statement, adding that the frigate would head to San Diego. There was no immediate word on how long that voyage might take.
The California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing had dispatched a military transport plane and a team of four men on Thursday to provide immediate medical assistance, said spokesman Second Lieutenant Roderick Bersamina.
The rescuers, laden with medical gear and other supplies, parachuted from the plane into the ocean, inflated a dinghy, motored toward the boat and boarded to treat the girl. “They took it upon themselves to do whatever necessary to save her life,” Bersamina said.
The rescuers then remained on the sailboat with the family while they waited for the Navy ship to arrive.
Reuters
