Woman swept out to sea in rubber ring found alive after 36 hours

A cargo ship spotted her 50 miles from the shore.

A woman who was swept out to sea while swimming with a rubber ring was rescued 36 hours later around 50 miles from the shore.

The woman, a Chinese national in her 20s, had disappeared from a beach in the central Shizuoka region of Japan on Monday evening.

A search and rescue operation was launched soon after, a local Japan Coast Guard official said.

‘It was around 7:55pm on July 8 when we received the information after the woman’s friend reported to a nearby convenience store that she was missing,’ the added.

A cargo ship finally spotted her floating off the southern tip of Chiba’s Boso peninsula at 7:48am on Wednesday, the official said.

Two crew members of a smaller nearby tanker, who were contacted by radio, jumped into the sea to rescue her.

She was later airlifted by a coast guard helicopter and taken back to land.

The chopper rescue was filmed and the video shared with the public. In it the woman is seen being pulled into the aircraft before she waves at the tanker crew below.

The woman, who was not named, told rescuers that she was swept out to sea in the rubber ring and was unable to get back to the beach.

It is likely a sea current or the wind swept her out and her ring made it more difficult to control where she went, experts said.

The coast guard official said: ‘There are 80 kilometres in a straight line (between the beach and rescue spot)… but it is assumed she drifted for an even greater distance.’

The woman was dehydrated but otherwise in good health, he explained. She was taken to hospital as a precaution but did not need to be admitted.

He added that she was lucky to have survived despite the danger of heat stroke, hypothermia at night or being hit by a ship in the dark.

Hidetoshi Saito, a senior member of the Society of Water Rescue and Survival Research, said in a TV interview that the woman’s survival was like ‘a miracle’.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.