Posted on 04/08/2004 11:35:01 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
MADEIRA BEACH - As they craned their necks upward, a small group of tourists noticed something was wrong with the two teenage girls parasailing together Thursday afternoon. The girls were drifting 200 to 250 feet in the air - not over the Gulf of Mexico as they should have been, but over the beach. And they were headed inland. Then the same group, made up mainly of Midwesterners, noticed the line that had connected the pair to a boat was dragging along the surface of the Gulf.
It had snapped.
Some heard the girls scream.
Jon Shoemaker, a 34-year- old husband and father from Ohio who works for a pharmaceutical company, dove into the water to grab the 5/16-inch Kevlar line.
So did Mark Wiltz, 38, a salesman from Ada, Mich., also vacationing with his family.
Drew Corell, 34, a sales manager from Grand Rapids, Mich., grabbed the 11,700- pound-test line, too. So did Corell's brother-in-law, Rick Otte, 37, a high school teacher, also from Grand Rapids. One other man might have, also, the men said.
But try as they might, they said, they realized - in waist- deep water - that alone they would not be able to keep the pair of Atlanta 16-year-olds from drifting away.
The wind was too strong. The line was slipping through their hands, searing their palms, and they were being dragged. One wondered aloud whether the end of the line was about to slip through their hands, too.
That's when it happened, witnesses said: Beachgoers got up off their towels or beach chairs or started pouring out of nearby hotels and condominiums. They went to the line, too, jumping up to grab the part ascending into the sky or pushing down on the stretches of rope closer to the men in the water.
Eventually, anywhere from 50 to 100 people were either pulling down on the rope or making sure children weren't getting trampled in the tug-of- war, witnesses said.
The rescuers finally pulled the girls to safety.
One of the girls was praying as her feet gently touched the sand behind Madeira Norte, a condominium at 13000 Gulf Blvd.; the other was crying, witnesses said. Everyone burst into applause.
The girls were identified by authorities as Chelsea Elizabeth Waddell and Theresa Marie Blanford.
``The rope just snapped and we just kind of whiplashed,'' Waddell told freelance photojournalist Eamon Kneeshaw. ``We were on top of a bunch of buildings and streets and roads. It was really freaky.'' Blanford said they were ``really scared.''
They should have been. In 1990, George E. Myers, 28, of New York City died in a parasailing accident on Sand Key in Clearwater during which he was slammed into a seawall, construction equipment and parked cars. In 2001, a Kentucky woman and her teenage daughter fell 250 feet to their deaths at Fort Myers Beach when their seating harness broke.
The Coast Guard is investigating Thursday's incident.
The two Atlanta girls were customers of Get Wet Parasail, one of a handful of parasailing operations along the boardwalk at Johns Pass, which connects the Intracoastal Waterway and the Gulf.
Mark Yeager, manager of Get Wet, said the wind had dwindled to nearly nothing Thursday, so it was decided that a larger chute should be used. The girls were kept aloft by such a chute when the wind picked up dramatically, Yeager said. The line immediately snapped taut, and the girls were being pulled ashore by the wind, Yeager said.
The captain of the boat to which the girls were attached decided to turn around and head toward shore in a maneuver designed to help slacken the rope, but then the line snapped, Yeager said.
Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 823-3303.
Good for them.
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 51 | Kenya | 50.00 |
1 |
50.00 |
4 |
12.50 |
20.00 |
1 |
Thanks for donating to Free Republic!
Move your locale up the leaderboard!
Liberalism is so dumb.
Regards,
Well said.
This is a photo they'll keep.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.