Tales of Tsunami Survival: 3 From California 'Sailed Into It'
By COREY KILGANNON
January 2, 2005
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/in...02survivors.ht
ml?ex=1105333200&en=e0f59e4628c138e1&ei=5006&partn er=ALTAVISTA1

The tidal waves that slammed Indian Ocean shorelines a week ago struck
during the height of the tourist season, killing hundreds of foreigners on
vacation from dozens of countries. At least 15 Americans are reported dead,
with many more missing, and that number will certainly rise as the
authorities gain a clearer picture of the devastation.

But as surviving American travelers to the region worked their way home in
recent days, their stories offered a vivid picture of the destruction.

Three Americans sailing a boat just off a Thai beach could not escape the
30-foot tsunami, they said, so they survived by sailing directly into it.

Julie Sobolewski, 47, her son Casey Sobolewski, 25, and their friend John
Hanke, 42, all experienced sailors from Oceanside, Calif., chartered a 35-
foot sailboat to sailing off Rai Leh Beach in the Krabi region.

On a "gorgeous, sunny, hot day," she said, they were half a mile offshore
and headed toward a sandbar and beach where some 150 people were
sunbathing. Suddenly a 30-foot wall of water appeared and washed over the
island.

"It looked like the top half of the island was falling into the ocean," she
said. It swallowed up the people. "They disappeared," she said.

The beautiful blue waters suddenly turned turbulent, and the tsunami then
shattered a half dozen wooden longboats nearby.

"When it hit the five boats, they just exploded, and all of a sudden there
were 35 people floating in the waters," she said.

Then it bore down on them. "We realized we couldn't outrun it and sailed
into it," she said.

The wave had been weakened by the sandbar, and the boat knifed through it.
After that, they spent six hours rescuing people in the water, she said.

"We had no idea it was a tsunami," she said. "We were just doing what we
had to do. We just knew what we had seen."

In the same area, Christianna Savino, 20, and her friend, Jake Duhart, 21,
who teach English in Bangkok, were rock climbing above a beach.

Mr. Duhart was 40 feet up the rocky waterfront bluff when he heard climbers
above him yelling about a giant wave.

In the ensuing panic, with a huge wall of white water roaring toward them,
they struggled to free themselves from their safety lines and joined the
hundreds of beachgoers clambering for higher ground.

The waves left "screaming people with bloody and gashed-up limbs and faces"
in its wake, Ms. Savino wrote in an e-mail message to relatives and friends.

Helicopters and ambulances rushed injured people to a hospital, and
relatives and friends of victims crowded to the beach as rescue boats
dropped off bodies wrapped in blue tarps.

"People would have hopes in their eyes until the tarps were unwrapped and
the faces were shown, and then they would cover their mouths and cry,"
wrote Ms. Savino, who is from Boulder, Colo. "Most were hoping the bodies
weren't the ones they were looking for, while some were just hoping to find
closure on their missing friends and relatives."

One Californian couple escaped death by actually scuba diving under the
tsunami. Faye Linda Wachs and Eugene J. Kim, from Santa Monica, Calif.,
were diving 120 feet underwater off Ko Phi Phi Island in Thailand when the
tsunami hit. All they knew was that there was a sudden heavy current and
loss of visibility in the water.

Soon, they quit and headed toward shore. They began seeing dead bodies in
the water, both Thai and tourists, with their clothing ripped off.
Fishermen were dragging bodies toward shore.

On the beach, cats and dogs and children's toys were everywhere, and people
were running around screaming, said Ms. Wachs, 35, a sociology professor.
One palm tree had a speedboat impaled on it upside down; another had a dead
baby in its branches. The piles of dead bodies were separated: Thais and
tourists.

"There were lots of broken legs and deep gash wounds like you'd expect to
see in the Civil War," Ms. Wachs said. Of the lucky ones washed cleanly out
to sea, some swam back.

Their cabana was leveled, and their possessions all gone, but they had
their bathing suits, flip-flops and their wallets.

"We began seeing we had just freakishly survived a natural catastrophe,"
said Mr. Kim, 34, a transportation consultant.

Some able-bodied men survived by scurrying up palm trees, but some were
still washed out with the trees.

Ms. Wachs's and Mr. Kim's hotel became a makeshift hospital run by a Thai
doctor who had people strip sheets off hotel beds to use for tourniquets.
People screamed for morphine. Makeshift bamboo bridges were placed over
sink holes, and people split into crews using doors and box springs to
carry the injured to helicopters.

"We asked a man we were carrying if there was anyone looking for him, and
he said, 'No, my girlfriend dead, I saw her die.' So we told him, 'Well,
your family really wants to see you alive.' "

Mr. Kim recalled, "Within the total chaos, there was a sense of order, of
every man and woman dividing into search and rescue teams and leaders
sending them out."

"It was a weird, horrible nightmarish 'Survivor' situation," he said.

-----------------------------------------------------

Oceanside woman tells of tsunami rescues
By KATHY DAY - Staff Writer
North County Times
December 31, 2004
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004..._46_3412_30_04
..txt

OCEANSIDE ---- Julie Sobolewski knew something was wrong when the 200-foot-
tall rock she and her crew were sailing toward off the coast of Thailand
was suddenly half covered in white.

What she didn't know was that it was the first sign of the tsunami that
struck the South Asia coast Sunday.

And she also didn't know at that moment that she, her son Casey and sailing
buddy John Henke would save about 50 lives because they happened to be in
what the Oceanside woman called "the miracle of that little tiny space."

Sobolewski talked about her adventure Thursday, less than two days after
she and her son returned from a part of the world that is now dealing with
the reported deaths of as many of 117,000 people. Having slept for the
first time in three days, she and her parents met with a reporter for a
fairly normal breakfast at Oceanside's Beach Break cafe, finding refuge
from ringing phones and media inquiries.

Sobolewski had been sailing from island to island on the east side of
Phuket, Thailand. The group had just spent Christmas Eve on Phi-Phi Island -
--- now "gone," she said ---- and were headed north to a snorkeling spot at
Koh Dam Khwan consisting of a sandspit between two large rocks.

As they approached from about a mile offshore, Henke looked up and saw "a
white slash" on one of the rocks, said the 47-year-old Sobolewski.

At first, she said, they thought it was the rock breaking apart, but soon
they realized it was a wave and were thinking, "Oh, isn't that pretty." But
then they saw a 30-foot, "beautiful North Shore (Hawaii) wave."

A veteran outrigger canoe paddler who has been sailing for years and is
already talking about a trip to the British Virgin Isles, Sobolewski said
she knew what the wave would do to the traditional fishing boats, called
longboats.

"I knew they weren't going to outrun or ride those waves," she said. "All I
could think of was that it could have been my Paopao (Outrigger Canoe Club)
friends."

The wave shattered the boats, throwing the occupants into the water and
consuming snorkelers along the beach. Soon the water "turned into
whitewater-like rapids," she recalled.

She said she has no memory of the next few minutes. "I don't remember
anything other than pulling people on the boat," she said Thursday, as her
thankful parents sat nearby.

There we were, she said, "within reaching distance of people who were just
floating, hanging on to pieces of wood. We couldn't not help the people."

At one point, she said, she counted 21 people aboard the 35-foot boat they
had chartered in Phuket. In all, after taking people to nearby ferries,
they figure they rescued about 50 people, ranging from a 4-year-old child
to adults pleading for the rescuers to help the children first.

As a second wave approached and they struggled to keep the fully loaded
sailboat from capsizing, Sobolewski realized her 25-year-old son had taken
the 6-foot-long dinghy in an effort to rescue people clinging to the rock.
He was racing away from the sailboat, "trying to outrun the wave, heading
out to sea," she said, adding that she had been so engrossed in her own
efforts that she hadn't realized her son had ventured out on his own.

After the wave passed, Casey continued his mission and rescued several
young Thai men who had been stranded on a rock off Ao Nang shore. At one
point, his grandmother Carolyn Coles said, he told them they spent six
hours rescuing people.

They anchored at sea that night, still not quite sure what had happened. It
was only when they radioed in about 9 the next morning that they were
coming into port that they discovered the enormity of the disaster.

"We got the OK to come in," Sobolewski said, "and they told us that the
west side of Phuket was gone."

They also told them it was "worldwide news with 11,000 dead."

As soon as they landed, they gave her a phone. "That's when I started to
get shaky," she said.

Three hours later, they were on a plane home, leaving behind Henke, who had
lost his passport.

Her parents, Carolyn and Jay Coles, and other family members had been
gathered for a day-after-Christmas celebration at the Coles' Visalia home.
They woke up that morning to word of the tsunami and the location at Phuket
and panic set in, Carolyn Coles said.

"We were in turmoil, knowing she's there," Jay Coles said. "You watch TV
and it keeps building on you."

"We went for 12 hours without word," he added.

They called the Red Cross, the State Department and even the sailboat
charter company. The person there told them they had four boats out. They
had contacted two, "but not Julie," her dad said, tears welling up in his
eyes, smiling now, with his daughter by his side. They told him they were
sending rescue boats out at dawn.

But there were no boats left to send, his daughter said.

When they finally got word that she was safe, it came through a friend,
Leslie Baron. "I had tried to call my folks, but was so shaky that I
couldn't remember their number," Sobolewski said.

So Baron called them instead ---- a call that brought tears of joy to the
14 people in the Coles' house.

When Henke got home Wednesday night after solving his passport problem, he
called Sobolewski.

"He asked me, 'Why haven't we cried yet?' " she said. The answer, in part,
was that it will take time. The other part, she added, "There's still hope."

That fact, she said, was bolstered by an e-mail she received Wednesday. She
had picked up a floating red backpack and had looked through it for some
sort of identification. She found none, but did find a couple of e-mail
addresses. When she got home, she sent messages asking for information
about the backpack's owner.

An answer came back: The English couple who had been snorkeling off the
sandspit that had been Sobolewski's destination had been found alive. The e-
mail came from someone the pair had met on their trip.

"It was a little place where I was ---- the place to be to help those other
people," she said, sitting quietly as the reality of what they had done was
beginning to set in.

Yet she was still slightly overwhelmed by the media attention that has put
her on CNN, the Today Show, Fox News and MSNBC. Sobolewski, who owns
Adrageous, a promotional sales company, has sold her photos that have been
broadcast on television to Newsweek. She says she will send any money she
earns directly to Thailand for relief efforts in the Krabi province.

"I don't feel like a survivor," she said. "It doesn't feel applicable, but
then I look at the big picture and think, 'Gee, I did survive that.' "

-----------------------------------------------------

Survivor Stories
FOXNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,142963,00.html

(This is a partial transcript from "On the Record," December 29, 2004, that
has been edited for clarity.)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, GUESY HOST: Our next guests were sailing off the island of
Phuket (search) in Thailand when the tsunami (search) struck Sunday. Julie
Sobolewski and her son, Casey, join us from San Diego.

Julie, you two were sailing with a friend. Tell us how far you were off
shore and what you saw when the tsunami hit.

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: We had just left a little island where
we'd had breakfast that morning. We were about a half a mile from shore and
about a half a mile from the next small, little island that we were heading
to snorkel when a huge wave came and took out the sandbar that we were
heading towards.

CAMEROTA: And Casey, after the wave struck, many of the smaller wooden
boats around you broke apart, but not yours. So you guys started helping
stranded people. Explain to us how you rescued them and what they were
saying as you were.

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: Well, as we were coming up to the
event, you know, there was all these long-tail boats, you know, full of
tourists and Thai locals. And when the wave came and shattered the boats,
we were close enough that I was able to rush into a dingy that we were
pulling behind our sailboat and rushed out and started pulling in the
people. And it seemed like, you know, there were probably about 40 people
floating in the water, ages 4 to 30. And all the locals were yelling
children and pointing at the children, you know, and that was my first goal
or task, if you would, was to get as many of these kids into my boat and
onto our sailboat.

CAMEROTA: So your strategy was to first save the children, then you went
for the adults. Was everyone hysterical? Were people calm? What were they
saying?

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: Kids were screaming. All the women were crying. When I
pulled the people into my boat, all the women and the children were just
holding onto me. It was very emotional. It was very emotional.

CAMEROTA: I can imagine. Julie, by pulling people out of the water, you and
Casey and your friend, did you fear that you were putting your own lives in
danger?

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: Not at the time. We were just really busy funding people
and getting them on the boat and figuring out what to do next and continued
searching the area. Really didn't take time to be afraid.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Did you see examples of those heart-breaking stories that
we're hearing about, about loved ones and couples being together, and in an
instant, in the blink of an eye, being separated and not being able to find
each other again?

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: Not so much. When all of these people were in the water
and there was another big wave coming, it was apparent that if we didn't
get them on our boat and the second wave hit them, that they would be
separated and separated from the items that were keeping them afloat. So we
were concentrating on getting everyone we could see into the boat.

CAMEROTA: And Casey, how many people do you estimate that you guys rescued?

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: I would say 50 people. If we didn't pull them out of the
water, we rescued them from stranded rocks that they had been slipped away
to.

CAMEROTA: That's incredible. In some ways, do you think that it might have
been safer out at sea than on shore when the tsunami hit?

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: It was definitely safer in deep water. You know, another
mile out past this island, the water gets to about 23 meters deep. Where we
were at, it was two, three meters deep. So when the tsunamis came and hit
the reef and the shore, that's what caused the waves and that's where the
devastation actually came from.

CAMEROTA: Julie, you say that you saw a couple of other sailboats in the
area, but that they didn't stop to help those people stranded. I imagine
they were too terrified?

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: I'm not sure if they knew what to do. We were hearing a
lot of rumors about another big one coming, one coming at two o'clock, and
then at three o'clock, we heard one's coming at five o'clock. And we didn't
know what to do or where to go, and the other boats didn't, either.

CAMEROTA: OK. So tell us how you got back into shore, and then the scene
that you saw once you were back in shore.

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: Well, we were trying to find a couple that we had met
earlier and get some information from them on what to do next. And so Casey
stayed in the big boat and deep water, and John took the dingy and took me
ashore, back to where we'd had breakfast that morning. And there was just
devastation. The restaurants were completely obliterated, and there were
boats thrown all the way up on shore, and just massive destruction and
eerily few people around.

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: The Internet cafe that I had spent the morning at,
talking on instant message with my girlfriend and my best friend, was gone.
If we hadn't been on that, spent 15 minutes talking to them, we would have
been in the trouble area, and who knows if we would have been around.

CAMEROTA: And you're talking to us tonight from California. You're back at
home. How did you get home so quickly? And what are your thoughts, now that
you're safe at home?

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: As soon as we got back to Phuket, to actual shore, you
know, the first thing we wanted to do was go home. And we called China
Airlines, and they were more than helpful in getting us home right away.
And our main concerns and thoughts is we just wanted to get home and tell
everybody that we know that we're safe and we love them and we're very
grateful.

CAMEROTA: And Julie, you, too? You must be terribly relieved to be home.

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: It's interesting. When we got to shore, we had no idea at
the time the extent of what was going on, and we didn't even know that the
United States had heard anything of what was happening. And so when we
called our parents and found out what they'd gone through that day, sitting
there watching this news all day, not knowing where we were, I think it was
harder on them than it was on us. So it's a great relief to let them know
that we're safe.

CAMEROTA: We can imagine. Well, thank you for sharing your story with us,
Julie and Casey.

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: Thank you.

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: Thank you.

Too stupid to just post the link? Here... let me show you how...

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"John Deere" wrote in message
news:bHV0ZWZpc2s=.5738ef93abbe8a494ac6712fcb97b775 @1104868162.nulluser.com...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/in...ner=ALTAVISTA1

WOW ! Thanks, JD.

Scotty


"John Deere" wrote in message
news:bHV0ZWZpc2s=.5738ef93abbe8a494ac6712fcb97b775 @1104868162.nulluser
..com...
Tales of Tsunami Survival: 3 From California 'Sailed Into It'
By COREY KILGANNON
January 2, 2005
New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/in...cial4/02surviv
ors.ht
ml?ex=1105333200&en=e0f59e4628c138e1&ei=5006&partn er=ALTAVISTA1

The tidal waves that slammed Indian Ocean shorelines a week ago
struck
during the height of the tourist season, killing hundreds of
foreigners on
vacation from dozens of countries. At least 15 Americans are
reported dead,
with many more missing, and that number will certainly rise as the
authorities gain a clearer picture of the devastation.

But as surviving American travelers to the region worked their way
home in
recent days, their stories offered a vivid picture of the
destruction.

Three Americans sailing a boat just off a Thai beach could not
escape the
30-foot tsunami, they said, so they survived by sailing directly
into it.

Julie Sobolewski, 47, her son Casey Sobolewski, 25, and their friend
John
Hanke, 42, all experienced sailors from Oceanside, Calif., chartered
a 35-
foot sailboat to sailing off Rai Leh Beach in the Krabi region.

On a "gorgeous, sunny, hot day," she said, they were half a mile
offshore
and headed toward a sandbar and beach where some 150 people were
sunbathing. Suddenly a 30-foot wall of water appeared and washed
over the
island.

"It looked like the top half of the island was falling into the
ocean," she
said. It swallowed up the people. "They disappeared," she said.

The beautiful blue waters suddenly turned turbulent, and the tsunami
then
shattered a half dozen wooden longboats nearby.

"When it hit the five boats, they just exploded, and all of a sudden
there
were 35 people floating in the waters," she said.

Then it bore down on them. "We realized we couldn't outrun it and
sailed
into it," she said.

The wave had been weakened by the sandbar, and the boat knifed
through it.
After that, they spent six hours rescuing people in the water, she
said.

"We had no idea it was a tsunami," she said. "We were just doing
what we
had to do. We just knew what we had seen."

In the same area, Christianna Savino, 20, and her friend, Jake
Duhart, 21,
who teach English in Bangkok, were rock climbing above a beach.

Mr. Duhart was 40 feet up the rocky waterfront bluff when he heard
climbers
above him yelling about a giant wave.

In the ensuing panic, with a huge wall of white water roaring toward
them,
they struggled to free themselves from their safety lines and joined
the
hundreds of beachgoers clambering for higher ground.

The waves left "screaming people with bloody and gashed-up limbs and
faces"
in its wake, Ms. Savino wrote in an e-mail message to relatives and
friends.

Helicopters and ambulances rushed injured people to a hospital, and
relatives and friends of victims crowded to the beach as rescue
boats
dropped off bodies wrapped in blue tarps.

"People would have hopes in their eyes until the tarps were
unwrapped and
the faces were shown, and then they would cover their mouths and
cry,"
wrote Ms. Savino, who is from Boulder, Colo. "Most were hoping the
bodies
weren't the ones they were looking for, while some were just hoping
to find
closure on their missing friends and relatives."

One Californian couple escaped death by actually scuba diving under
the
tsunami. Faye Linda Wachs and Eugene J. Kim, from Santa Monica,
Calif.,
were diving 120 feet underwater off Ko Phi Phi Island in Thailand
when the
tsunami hit. All they knew was that there was a sudden heavy current
and
loss of visibility in the water.

Soon, they quit and headed toward shore. They began seeing dead
bodies in
the water, both Thai and tourists, with their clothing ripped off.
Fishermen were dragging bodies toward shore.

On the beach, cats and dogs and children's toys were everywhere, and
people
were running around screaming, said Ms. Wachs, 35, a sociology
professor.
One palm tree had a speedboat impaled on it upside down; another had
a dead
baby in its branches. The piles of dead bodies were separated: Thais
and
tourists.

"There were lots of broken legs and deep gash wounds like you'd
expect to
see in the Civil War," Ms. Wachs said. Of the lucky ones washed
cleanly out
to sea, some swam back.

Their cabana was leveled, and their possessions all gone, but they
had
their bathing suits, flip-flops and their wallets.

"We began seeing we had just freakishly survived a natural
catastrophe,"
said Mr. Kim, 34, a transportation consultant.

Some able-bodied men survived by scurrying up palm trees, but some
were
still washed out with the trees.

Ms. Wachs's and Mr. Kim's hotel became a makeshift hospital run by a
Thai
doctor who had people strip sheets off hotel beds to use for
tourniquets.
People screamed for morphine. Makeshift bamboo bridges were placed
over
sink holes, and people split into crews using doors and box springs
to
carry the injured to helicopters.

"We asked a man we were carrying if there was anyone looking for
him, and
he said, 'No, my girlfriend dead, I saw her die.' So we told him,
'Well,
your family really wants to see you alive.' "

Mr. Kim recalled, "Within the total chaos, there was a sense of
order, of
every man and woman dividing into search and rescue teams and
leaders
sending them out."

"It was a weird, horrible nightmarish 'Survivor' situation," he
said.

-----------------------------------------------------

Oceanside woman tells of tsunami rescues
By KATHY DAY - Staff Writer
North County Times
December 31, 2004

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004...ies/20_46_3412
_30_04
.txt

OCEANSIDE ---- Julie Sobolewski knew something was wrong when the
200-foot-
tall rock she and her crew were sailing toward off the coast of
Thailand
was suddenly half covered in white.

What she didn't know was that it was the first sign of the tsunami
that
struck the South Asia coast Sunday.

And she also didn't know at that moment that she, her son Casey and
sailing
buddy John Henke would save about 50 lives because they happened to
be in
what the Oceanside woman called "the miracle of that little tiny
space."

Sobolewski talked about her adventure Thursday, less than two days
after
she and her son returned from a part of the world that is now
dealing with
the reported deaths of as many of 117,000 people. Having slept for
the
first time in three days, she and her parents met with a reporter
for a
fairly normal breakfast at Oceanside's Beach Break cafe, finding
refuge
from ringing phones and media inquiries.

Sobolewski had been sailing from island to island on the east side
of
Phuket, Thailand. The group had just spent Christmas Eve on Phi-Phi
Island -
--- now "gone," she said ---- and were headed north to a snorkeling
spot at
Koh Dam Khwan consisting of a sandspit between two large rocks.

As they approached from about a mile offshore, Henke looked up and
saw "a
white slash" on one of the rocks, said the 47-year-old Sobolewski.

At first, she said, they thought it was the rock breaking apart, but
soon
they realized it was a wave and were thinking, "Oh, isn't that
pretty." But
then they saw a 30-foot, "beautiful North Shore (Hawaii) wave."

A veteran outrigger canoe paddler who has been sailing for years and
is
already talking about a trip to the British Virgin Isles, Sobolewski
said
she knew what the wave would do to the traditional fishing boats,
called
longboats.

"I knew they weren't going to outrun or ride those waves," she said.
"All I
could think of was that it could have been my Paopao (Outrigger
Canoe Club)
friends."

The wave shattered the boats, throwing the occupants into the water
and
consuming snorkelers along the beach. Soon the water "turned into
whitewater-like rapids," she recalled.

She said she has no memory of the next few minutes. "I don't
remember
anything other than pulling people on the boat," she said Thursday,
as her
thankful parents sat nearby.

There we were, she said, "within reaching distance of people who
were just
floating, hanging on to pieces of wood. We couldn't not help the
people."

At one point, she said, she counted 21 people aboard the 35-foot
boat they
had chartered in Phuket. In all, after taking people to nearby
ferries,
they figure they rescued about 50 people, ranging from a 4-year-old
child
to adults pleading for the rescuers to help the children first.

As a second wave approached and they struggled to keep the fully
loaded
sailboat from capsizing, Sobolewski realized her 25-year-old son had
taken
the 6-foot-long dinghy in an effort to rescue people clinging to the
rock.
He was racing away from the sailboat, "trying to outrun the wave,
heading
out to sea," she said, adding that she had been so engrossed in her
own
efforts that she hadn't realized her son had ventured out on his
own.

After the wave passed, Casey continued his mission and rescued
several
young Thai men who had been stranded on a rock off Ao Nang shore. At
one
point, his grandmother Carolyn Coles said, he told them they spent
six
hours rescuing people.

They anchored at sea that night, still not quite sure what had
happened. It
was only when they radioed in about 9 the next morning that they
were
coming into port that they discovered the enormity of the disaster.

"We got the OK to come in," Sobolewski said, "and they told us that
the
west side of Phuket was gone."

They also told them it was "worldwide news with 11,000 dead."

As soon as they landed, they gave her a phone. "That's when I
started to
get shaky," she said.

Three hours later, they were on a plane home, leaving behind Henke,
who had
lost his passport.

Her parents, Carolyn and Jay Coles, and other family members had
been
gathered for a day-after-Christmas celebration at the Coles' Visalia
home.
They woke up that morning to word of the tsunami and the location at
Phuket
and panic set in, Carolyn Coles said.

"We were in turmoil, knowing she's there," Jay Coles said. "You
watch TV
and it keeps building on you."

"We went for 12 hours without word," he added.

They called the Red Cross, the State Department and even the
sailboat
charter company. The person there told them they had four boats out.
They
had contacted two, "but not Julie," her dad said, tears welling up
in his
eyes, smiling now, with his daughter by his side. They told him they
were
sending rescue boats out at dawn.

But there were no boats left to send, his daughter said.

When they finally got word that she was safe, it came through a
friend,
Leslie Baron. "I had tried to call my folks, but was so shaky that I
couldn't remember their number," Sobolewski said.

So Baron called them instead ---- a call that brought tears of joy
to the
14 people in the Coles' house.

When Henke got home Wednesday night after solving his passport
problem, he
called Sobolewski.

"He asked me, 'Why haven't we cried yet?' " she said. The answer, in
part,
was that it will take time. The other part, she added, "There's
still hope."

That fact, she said, was bolstered by an e-mail she received
Wednesday. She
had picked up a floating red backpack and had looked through it for
some
sort of identification. She found none, but did find a couple of
e-mail
addresses. When she got home, she sent messages asking for
information
about the backpack's owner.

An answer came back: The English couple who had been snorkeling off
the
sandspit that had been Sobolewski's destination had been found
alive. The e-
mail came from someone the pair had met on their trip.

"It was a little place where I was ---- the place to be to help
those other
people," she said, sitting quietly as the reality of what they had
done was
beginning to set in.

Yet she was still slightly overwhelmed by the media attention that
has put
her on CNN, the Today Show, Fox News and MSNBC. Sobolewski, who owns
Adrageous, a promotional sales company, has sold her photos that
have been
broadcast on television to Newsweek. She says she will send any
money she
earns directly to Thailand for relief efforts in the Krabi province.

"I don't feel like a survivor," she said. "It doesn't feel
applicable, but
then I look at the big picture and think, 'Gee, I did survive that.'
"

-----------------------------------------------------

Survivor Stories
FOXNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,142963,00.html

(This is a partial transcript from "On the Record," December 29,
2004, that
has been edited for clarity.)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, GUESY HOST: Our next guests were sailing off the
island of
Phuket (search) in Thailand when the tsunami (search) struck Sunday.
Julie
Sobolewski and her son, Casey, join us from San Diego.

Julie, you two were sailing with a friend. Tell us how far you were
off
shore and what you saw when the tsunami hit.

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: We had just left a little island
where
we'd had breakfast that morning. We were about a half a mile from
shore and
about a half a mile from the next small, little island that we were
heading
to snorkel when a huge wave came and took out the sandbar that we
were
heading towards.

CAMEROTA: And Casey, after the wave struck, many of the smaller
wooden
boats around you broke apart, but not yours. So you guys started
helping
stranded people. Explain to us how you rescued them and what they
were
saying as you were.

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: Well, as we were coming up to
the
event, you know, there was all these long-tail boats, you know, full
of
tourists and Thai locals. And when the wave came and shattered the
boats,
we were close enough that I was able to rush into a dingy that we
were
pulling behind our sailboat and rushed out and started pulling in
the
people. And it seemed like, you know, there were probably about 40
people
floating in the water, ages 4 to 30. And all the locals were yelling
children and pointing at the children, you know, and that was my
first goal
or task, if you would, was to get as many of these kids into my boat
and
onto our sailboat.

CAMEROTA: So your strategy was to first save the children, then you
went
for the adults. Was everyone hysterical? Were people calm? What were
they
saying?

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: Kids were screaming. All the women were crying.
When I
pulled the people into my boat, all the women and the children were
just
holding onto me. It was very emotional. It was very emotional.

CAMEROTA: I can imagine. Julie, by pulling people out of the water,
you and
Casey and your friend, did you fear that you were putting your own
lives in
danger?

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: Not at the time. We were just really busy funding
people
and getting them on the boat and figuring out what to do next and
continued
searching the area. Really didn't take time to be afraid.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Did you see examples of those heart-breaking stories
that
we're hearing about, about loved ones and couples being together,
and in an
instant, in the blink of an eye, being separated and not being able
to find
each other again?

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: Not so much. When all of these people were in the
water
and there was another big wave coming, it was apparent that if we
didn't
get them on our boat and the second wave hit them, that they would
be
separated and separated from the items that were keeping them
afloat. So we
were concentrating on getting everyone we could see into the boat.

CAMEROTA: And Casey, how many people do you estimate that you guys
rescued?

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: I would say 50 people. If we didn't pull them out
of the
water, we rescued them from stranded rocks that they had been
slipped away
to.

CAMEROTA: That's incredible. In some ways, do you think that it
might have
been safer out at sea than on shore when the tsunami hit?

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: It was definitely safer in deep water. You know,
another
mile out past this island, the water gets to about 23 meters deep.
Where we
were at, it was two, three meters deep. So when the tsunamis came
and hit
the reef and the shore, that's what caused the waves and that's
where the
devastation actually came from.

CAMEROTA: Julie, you say that you saw a couple of other sailboats in
the
area, but that they didn't stop to help those people stranded. I
imagine
they were too terrified?

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: I'm not sure if they knew what to do. We were
hearing a
lot of rumors about another big one coming, one coming at two
o'clock, and
then at three o'clock, we heard one's coming at five o'clock. And we
didn't
know what to do or where to go, and the other boats didn't, either.

CAMEROTA: OK. So tell us how you got back into shore, and then the
scene
that you saw once you were back in shore.

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: Well, we were trying to find a couple that we had
met
earlier and get some information from them on what to do next. And
so Casey
stayed in the big boat and deep water, and John took the dingy and
took me
ashore, back to where we'd had breakfast that morning. And there was
just
devastation. The restaurants were completely obliterated, and there
were
boats thrown all the way up on shore, and just massive destruction
and
eerily few people around.

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: The Internet cafe that I had spent the morning at,
talking on instant message with my girlfriend and my best friend,
was gone.
If we hadn't been on that, spent 15 minutes talking to them, we
would have
been in the trouble area, and who knows if we would have been
around.

CAMEROTA: And you're talking to us tonight from California. You're
back at
home. How did you get home so quickly? And what are your thoughts,
now that
you're safe at home?

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: As soon as we got back to Phuket, to actual shore,
you
know, the first thing we wanted to do was go home. And we called
China
Airlines, and they were more than helpful in getting us home right
away.
And our main concerns and thoughts is we just wanted to get home and
tell
everybody that we know that we're safe and we love them and we're
very
grateful.

CAMEROTA: And Julie, you, too? You must be terribly relieved to be
home.

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: It's interesting. When we got to shore, we had no
idea at
the time the extent of what was going on, and we didn't even know
that the
United States had heard anything of what was happening. And so when
we
called our parents and found out what they'd gone through that day,
sitting
there watching this news all day, not knowing where we were, I think
it was
harder on them than it was on us. So it's a great relief to let them
know
that we're safe.

CAMEROTA: We can imagine. Well, thank you for sharing your story
with us,
Julie and Casey.

CASEY SOBOLEWSKI: Thank you.

JULIE SOBOLEWSKI: Thank you.

I'm wondering if they sailed directly into it or at an angle... maybe they
didn't have time to adjust.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"John Deere" wrote in message
news:bHV0ZWZpc2s=.5738ef93abbe8a494ac6712fcb97b775 @1104868162.nulluser.com...
Three Americans sailing a boat just off a Thai beach could not escape the
30-foot tsunami, they said, so they survived by sailing directly into it.

Julie Sobolewski, 47, her son Casey Sobolewski, 25, and their friend John
Hanke, 42, all experienced sailors from Oceanside, Calif., chartered a 35-
foot sailboat to sailing off Rai Leh Beach in the Krabi region.

On a "gorgeous, sunny, hot day," she said, they were half a mile offshore
and headed toward a sandbar and beach where some 150 people were
sunbathing. Suddenly a 30-foot wall of water appeared and washed over the
island.

"It looked like the top half of the island was falling into the ocean,"
she
said. It swallowed up the people. "They disappeared," she said.

The beautiful blue waters suddenly turned turbulent, and the tsunami then
shattered a half dozen wooden longboats nearby.

"When it hit the five boats, they just exploded, and all of a sudden there
were 35 people floating in the waters," she said.

Then it bore down on them. "We realized we couldn't outrun it and sailed
into it," she said.

The wave had been weakened by the sandbar, and the boat knifed through it.
After that, they spent six hours rescuing people in the water, she said.

"We had no idea it was a tsunami," she said. "We were just doing what we
had to do. We just knew what we had seen."