(Tokyo) A woman swimming near a beach in Japan has been rescued 80 km offshore after drifting for 36 hours, Japanese authorities said Thursday.
The coast guard launched a search and rescue operation after being notified Monday that a Chinese national was missing in the Shizuoka region of central Japan.
“It was around 7:55 p.m. on July 8 when we received the information after the woman’s friend reported her missing,” a local Japan Coast Guard official told AFP.
Once rescued, the woman, whose name has not been given, told rescuers that she had been swept out to sea and had been unable to return to the beach because she was swimming with a rubber buoy.
It was finally spotted at 7:48 a.m. local time Wednesday off the southern tip of the Boso Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture east of Tokyo by a cargo ship, the official said.
Two crew members of a small oil tanker also passing in the area, contacted by radio, jumped into the sea to rescue her.
“It’s 80 kilometres as the crow flies (between the beach and where the swimmer was rescued), but we assume she drifted an even greater distance,” the official said.
The swimmer was taken to hospital, but her life was not in danger.