Here's one tough woman.

Lucky for her she was in subtropical waters. Survival time in the Pac NW would
have been maybe 15- 30 minutes before her body cooled off so much the major
organs began shutting down.

PALACIOS, Texas (Oct. 10) - Cold, frightened and desperate after 13 hours in
the choppy Gulf of Mexico, Melinda Lopez refused to give up.

After falling overboard Tuesday from the shrimp boat where she worked, Lopez
swam and floated until she reached safety at an oil platform, spray-painted a
distress signal and managed to activate an alarm system to summon help.


"I just had to stay strong. I didn't want to go like that," the 32-year-old
Lopez said in a story in Friday editions of The Victoria Advocate. "I didn't
want to be eaten by fishes. I was really scared."

Lopez's ordeal began 70 miles off Galveston in the Gulf of Mexico, where Lopez
was climbing around the 76-foot shrimper Ike and Zack to find a spot to read.
She slipped and fell in the water without a life jacket.

Neither the boat's three-man crew nor those of other boats that floated past
heard her cries.

"The water was rough," she said in the online edition of the Houston Chronicle,
adding that she was bumped by large fish. "The waves were coming over my head."

Lopez said she swam all night, following a distant sound and finally reaching a
foghorn on the offshore rig about daybreak Wednesday. There, she found a moldy
loaf of bread, other food and water - and some black and white paint.

She painted an SOS on the platform, made a balloon out of a black trash bag and
spray painted it with another plea for help. She was also able to trigger an
alarm system on the platform, which activated sirens and lights.

Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Adam Wine said a jet pilot spotted the SOS on
the oil platform Wednesday evening.

Rescued by a helicopter crew, she was "cold, shaking, dehydrated and in a
slight state of shock, but stable" when she was transferred to Galveston's
University of Texas Medical Branch, Wine said.

Lopez' mother cried and prayed as rescuers searched for her daughter.

"As long as she's my daughter, she'll never go to sea again," vowed Janie
Lopez, of Palacios.

"I don't want to even get in the water," her daughter said.

"Gould 0738" wrote in message
...
Here's one tough woman.

Hopefully, she's tough enough to find and kill the crew that left her out
there.

Hopefully? I'd say it a given she could...


In article , "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

"Gould 0738" wrote in message
...
Here's one tough woman.

Hopefully, she's tough enough to find and kill the crew that left her out
there.

Doug Kanter wrote:

Hopefully, she's tough enough to find and kill the crew that left her out
there.

Hopefully she has the moral strength to avoid jumping to absurd conclusions.

The Coast Guard received a relayed message from the shrimper two hours
after she was last seen on the boat. Commercial crews work hard and
don't go around doing bed checks on each other. When someone is "off"
the crew tend to leave them alone and not wake them up every few minutes
to see if they are still alive and onboard.

Not being onboard I certainly can't say what happened but it sure sounds
like she was "off" for the duration of a drag and she was left alone to
find some peace and quiet. When the drag was finished the crew called
her out and discovered she was missing. They then called for help.

If you think they deserve to be murdered for that then please stay ashore.

Rick

Sounds like a pretty sloppy arrangement to me, but hey...I'm nuts about
details.

"Rick" wrote in message
nk.net...
Doug Kanter wrote:

Hopefully, she's tough enough to find and kill the crew that left her
out
there.

Hopefully she has the moral strength to avoid jumping to absurd
conclusions.

The Coast Guard received a relayed message from the shrimper two hours
after she was last seen on the boat. Commercial crews work hard and
don't go around doing bed checks on each other. When someone is "off"
the crew tend to leave them alone and not wake them up every few minutes
to see if they are still alive and onboard.

Not being onboard I certainly can't say what happened but it sure sounds
like she was "off" for the duration of a drag and she was left alone to
find some peace and quiet. When the drag was finished the crew called
her out and discovered she was missing. They then called for help.

If you think they deserve to be murdered for that then please stay ashore.

Rick

Doug Kanter wrote:

Sounds like a pretty sloppy arrangement to me, but hey...I'm nuts about
details.

I suppose to a lubber it does sound "sloppy" but peace and quiet and
privacy are rare and precious moments on board working vessels and
crewmembers give each other considerable respect in that area.

Part of working at sea is the understanding that you have to assume a
great deal of personal responsibility for your own safety. A commercial
fishing vessel is not a yacht and there are no crewmembers assigned as
baby sitters.

One of the greatest joys of going to sea is the time, day or night, when
you can find a bit of deck away from the noise of the ship and the eyes
of your shipmates and simply be alone with the sea. Those of us who sail
for a living have an acute sense of the absolute fact that one false
step or misplaced handhold may be fatal. We know that it might be eight
hours before anyone knows we are missing and the ship may have traveled
150 miles in that time. That is not "sloppy" that is life at sea.


Rick

Lubber? Are you sure?

"Rick" wrote in message
ink.net...
Doug Kanter wrote:

Sounds like a pretty sloppy arrangement to me, but hey...I'm nuts about
details.

I suppose to a lubber it does sound "sloppy" but peace and quiet and
privacy are rare and precious moments on board working vessels and
crewmembers give each other considerable respect in that area.

Part of working at sea is the understanding that you have to assume a
great deal of personal responsibility for your own safety. A commercial
fishing vessel is not a yacht and there are no crewmembers assigned as
baby sitters.

One of the greatest joys of going to sea is the time, day or night, when
you can find a bit of deck away from the noise of the ship and the eyes
of your shipmates and simply be alone with the sea. Those of us who sail
for a living have an acute sense of the absolute fact that one false
step or misplaced handhold may be fatal. We know that it might be eight
hours before anyone knows we are missing and the ship may have traveled
150 miles in that time. That is not "sloppy" that is life at sea.


Rick

Doug Kanter wrote:

"Hopefully, she's tough enough to find and kill the crew
that left her out there."

Lubber? Are you sure?

Yeah. You convinced me.

Rick

You must be very young, or you have somehow passed through many years and
developed little or no ability to come to conclusions which fit what you
have observed.

"Rick" wrote in message
ink.net...
Doug Kanter wrote:

"Hopefully, she's tough enough to find and kill the crew
that left her out there."

Lubber? Are you sure?

Yeah. You convinced me.

Rick

I agree with Rick on this matter. Although my shipboard watch/off watch
experiences were onboard surface navy ships. There still were ~ 8 hour
periods where a crew members absense could go unnoticed.

However, a surface navy ship has lookouts on watch 24 hours a day. One or
more of these lookouts is assigned to watch from the stern or some other
elevated location that overlooks the stern wake of the ship. Of course,
there are an abundance of available watch standers on a navy ship. On a
commercial vessel these watch standers may not be.

Another thought. Over the past few years the USCG has been requiring more
and more safety equipment to be made available to commercial fishermen. Most
noteably in the N. Pac fish industry, the cold water survival suits. I'm
wondering how much longer it will be before they require man-over-board
beacons for crew and locator systems onboard. The technology is there!!

Just my thoughts, FWIW.

Steve
s/v Good Intentions