Video shows Australian surfers being found after 36 hours at sea
Dramatic video captured the moment a group of Australian surfers were found alive in the water – 36 hours after their boat capsized in bad weather off Indonesia on a 30th birthday celebration voyage.
Steph Weisse, Jordan Short and Will Teagle cheer and wave their surfboards along with an Indonesian crew member as a lifeboat approaches them, footage Posted by The New Daily shows.
But the cheering stops when rescuers realize a third Australian, Elliot Foote, is not among them.
“Where’s Elliot?” shouts one of the people on the boat.
“Got him?” yells back the rescued white woman who is Foote’s friend.
Foote had previously paddled ashore to get help and none of the people at the scene knew of his whereabouts – but the birthday girl was later found safe around three miles away.
It was his concerned father Peter speaking to a 7NEWS reporter When his partner Susan Whitla rushed over to deliver the good news that the surfers had been found alive.
“They say they’ve all been found!” Susan can be heard screaming.
About 90 minutes later, Peter received a text message from his son.
“Hey papa Elliot here. I’m alive. Safe now. Love you. Chat later,” read the text he sent from someone else’s phone.
According to the news outlet, Peter had organized his own search and rescue operation from Bronte Beach using friends, boats and social media.
“We tried to get planes and helicopters and it turned out they were only found by a man on a yacht,” he told 7NEWS.
“Thank you to the Aussies on the catamaran who volunteered… he was looking all night last night and knows the waters really well, he lives over there and was the one who found them,” Peter said point of sale.
He noticed that the friends had been in the water for a long time.
“I don’t know how they will fare health-wise, but they have been found, they are alive, they are fine. It’s all good, this is fantastic news,” said Peter. “It’s actually incredible, I’m so excited about it.”
The four Australians were among 17 people who were traveling in two speedboats on the island of Nias to Banyak off North Sumatra when their ship encountered bad weather and they went missing on Sunday evening.
Foote suffered a bad bout of board rash during the ordeal, but otherwise was fine and in good spirits.
Weisse’s mother, Jill Weisse, recalled the horror when she and her husband Wayne received the news that their daughter was missing.
“I immediately got cold and I was like, ‘Oh god, what a mess she’s gotten in this time,’ and Wayne just started crying and said, ‘She’s missing.'”
Those fears were allayed when they heard their daughter’s voice on Tuesday, her father said said 9News.
“[The boat captain]said, ‘Wayne, I have someone here who can talk to you,’ and it was my daughter and I heard her and she said, ‘Hi dad,'” Wayne told the outlet. “What a fright he gave me.”
