A California couple is suing a Hawaiian snorkeling tour operator for leaving them behind, half a mile offshore, while they were on their honeymoon.
The couple, Elizabeth Webster and Alexander Burckle, filed a suit in Federal court charging that the snorkeling boat from Sail Maui left them “abandoned” in the “open ocean.” They are suing Sail Maui for $5 million for emotional distress and trauma.
The couple, who are from Alameda County, booked the Lana’i Coast Snorkel tour from Sail Maui on Sept. 23, 2021. The suit says that at the first stop on the tour the captain gave a safety briefing to passengers, but did not mention any boundaries to their snorkeling or any “specific return time.”
Webster and Burckle snorkeled for about an hour and then tried to swim back to the boat when the waters became choppy. They then realized that the boat was moving away from them, heading for a second stop in deeper water. The suit says they “began signaling distress and calling for help,” but the boat moved farther away.
The couple were alone in “6-8-foot rolling surf” the suit says. No other boats were around. “Plaintiffs realized the vessel had left them and was not coming back for them, and they decided that their only option for survival at that time was to return to shore,” the suit says.
They had to swim about half a mile to shore, and arrived at a remote beach “fatigued and dehydrated,” the suit says, and they had cuts from the reef. They wrote “SOS” and “HELP” in the sand. Eventually they flagged down a passing truck, which delivered them to the ferry back to Maui.
The suit says that another passenger reported that the crew of the boat did a head count before it moved to the second location, and came up with 42 of the 44 passengers accounted for. A third head count produced the full 44. Sail Maui now makes “vocal contact with each listed passenger before departing.”
The suit will be heard on April 24. Read more:
