Diver adrift for 2? hours
21 November 2005
By DAVID MCLOUGHLIN

Saturday was going to be Yuki Fujita's day to remember. It was, but for
all the wrong reasons.

The 28-year-old from Kobe, Japan, got her much-hoped-for working visa
in the mail that morning, just in time to begin a job at Wellington
Hospital today.

She had a party on Saturday afternoon, and the day began so well she
was sure that during the lunchtime dive she was doing with friends off
Wellington's south coast, she would catch some crayfish to take.

Instead, after surfacing, she couldn't find her friends or the dive
boat. Paddling for her life in heavy seas, she drifted 4.5 kilometres
wearing her scuba tank and weight belt, at times able to hear a
helicopter searching for her far away, and wondering what her mother
would think if she drowned.

About the same time, back in Kobe, her mother, Mieko Fujita, was
visiting the shrine at the family grave to pray, a prayer Mrs Fujita
believes helped save her daughter's life.

For after 2-? hours adrift, when Ms Fujita had almost given up and land
was out of sight, the police launch Lady Elizabeth III suddenly
appeared, on its way to the search zone many kilometres away. "It was
my last hope, and I yelled 'help, help' and waved my rescue sausage,"
she recalled yesterday, referring to the bright-orange inflatable strip
divers carry to draw attention in an emergency.

She was pulled from the water and only then realised how near she had
come to death. "I started shaking and burst into tears and vowed I
would never scuba-dive again."

Ms Fujita, who came to New Zealand for a working holiday a year ago, is
an experienced diver who had made many dives with the group, which
included her dive buddy, Brett Bailey. Buddies are meant to stay
together under water. After the group began the dive in 15 metres of
water about 11.45am on Saturday, Mr Bailey did not see Ms Fujita, but
was given a signal by the instructor with them that she had surfaced
and was fine, so he continued the dive.

The sea was rough as they had motored to the dive spot, about 500m
offshore, near the Karori lighthouse, and Ms Fujita had felt ill, so Mr
Bailey assumed she'd decided to abandon the dive and stay on the boat.
"It was a mistake among a series of mistakes we made," Mr Bailey said
yesterday. "Buddies should never split for a moment, and I shouldn't
have accepted (the instructor's signal) that she was okay."