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Be unprepared that is!!! Get your OWN personal waterproof GPS and VHS Radio so YOU can call for help! Full Details Here!Missing divers tell of 48-hour ordeal They will always remember it as the most terrifying 48 hours of their lives. Five divers, including three Britons, who were missing for two days off Indonesia, have described how they were plunged from one life-threatening crisis into another after being swept away by strong currents.
The divers receive medical treatments at a clinic in Labuhan Bajo
By Andrew Alderson, Chief Reporter, and Thomas Bell in Bangkok
11:09PM BST 07 Jun 2008
The rescued group hugged and wept tears of joy on Saturday after first surviving for nine hours in treacherous, shark-infested seas and then fighting off the world's largest and most deadly lizards on a remote island.
The details of their ordeal emerged last night after the divers, who had clung to a log in the sea to prevent them from drowning, were found by national park rangers on an island inhabited by Komodo dragons, carnivores capable of killing humans.
The exhausted, dehydrated, sun-burnt and hungry group had to throw rocks to repel the most persistent reptile as it repeatedly tried to attack them. Komodo dragons grow up to 10ft long and can kill animals more than twice their size, including water buffalo.
The five vanished, and were feared dead, after a dive off Tawa Besar island inside the Komodo National Park on Thursday.
They were swept 25 miles away from their original position by fierce currents.
The three rescued Britons are Charlotte Allin, 24, and her boyfriend Jim Manning, 30, both from Devon, and Kathleen Mitchinson, who was living in Indonesia. The other divers, Helena Naradainen who is Swedish, and Laurent Pinel, who is French, are also safe.
Mr Pinel, 31, said yesterday that the party had been in the water for about nine hours before reaching land. He told how the group lived off mussels scavenged from the beach and had to repel a Komodo dragon during the 36 hours they waited to be spotted on Rinca, a tiny island.
"On the beach a Komodo dragon came amongst us yesterday [Friday] afternoon," said Mr Pinel, who described how the group pelted the reptile with rocks to scare it away.
Speaking after reaching a medical clinic on Flores island, Mr Pinel added: "We ate some kind of mussels scraped from the rocks."
He said that while in the water the group had struggled against a strong rip tide for several hours, but eventually they stopped swimming and tied themselves together by their diving vests to conserve energy.
Late on Thursday night, they saw a small island and desperately tried to reach land before they were swept out of the relative protection of the Nusa Tenggara island chain. "If we'd continued [to drift], it would have been the ocean," he said. "We were exhausted. Everyone had cramps."
The party was being treated for dehydration, exhaustion and minor cuts.
The 48-hour rescue effort was led by Ernest Lewandowski, Ms Mitchinson's Scottish-born husband, who had been in another boat when the dive party vanished. He and his wife had an emotional reunion on Saturday.
After hearing of the rescue, Mr Lewandowski said he was ecstatic that his wife and the four other divers had been found safe. "Thank God. I just want to hear my wife's voice," he said.
After swimming to land, the group spent two nights on Rinca, before being found by members of a 30-strong rescue party, which included Frank Winkler, a German, who runs another dive club.
He was hailed as a hero for identifying where the party was most likely to be found.
Mr Winkler, said : "It was a simple calculation, a little bit of luck. I thought, 'They finished their dive with a tide that was heading to the south, there was no way they were heading to the north.' So it was a couple of calculations, five knots an hour, so we just followed the route, and we calculated the current, the rising tide that was later coming from the south, and we calculated that they could be in that area."
He described the moment the party was located. "I was driving the boat and I told my captain, 'Please look in that direction, they should be somewhere there'. And somebody was waving on the shore, standing on the rocks somewhere there. Of course it was an amazing moment after several hours."
However, a small speed boat, not his larger boat, went to collect the five divers from the shore.
"When they were sitting in the boat, maybe they had a kind of shock and they couldn't realise what has happened, just the owner of this dive shop [Kathleen Mitchinson] was saying 'Thank you'. We tried to invite them to come on our boat because it's a big boat, more comfortable, and we have beds, something to eat, hot coffee, but they wanted to stay on the small speedboat."
Mr Winkler's wife, Anne, chatted with the French diver who told her how the party had found the island shortly before midnight on Thursday.
"Two of the five tried to go swimming close to the coast and they were screaming 'There's a beach everybody'," Mrs Winkler said.
One Indonesian diver, called only Nordin, who saw the rescued group, said: "Everybody is very happy. I have just been at the hospital. Their condition is 100 per cent OK.
"Everybody can walk and is smiling. They tried to get some food on the island by eating snails. We have many, many animals there.
"The only big worry was Komodo dragons, because they tried to get closer and closer. They were not able to sleep on the island. They had to keep their eyes open all the time."
Nordin works for Reefseekers, the dive company owned by Mr Lewandowksi and his wife.
The five divers were taken by speedboat from Rinca to Labuan Bajo, a port on the western tip of nearby Flores.
The Allin family, from Northam, north Devon, were overjoyed yesterday after their daughter rang them at 8am to say she was safe and well.
David Allin, Charlotte's father, said: "They are alive and it's fantastic news. Charlotte was calm: she couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about. But we want to get her home as quickly as we can."
Charlotte's mother Sue, said: "I didn't believe that she was all right until I heard her voice.
"She sounded well but she was at the hospital being treated for dehydration and cuts and bruises to her feet."
Members of the family gathered in Northam yesterday to celebrate their news.
"We are going to have a barbecue and a bottle of champagne," Mr Allin said.
Mr Manning is understood to have served with the 59 Independent Commando Squadron of the Royal Engineers which is based in Barnstaple, North Devon, and is part of the Royal Marines.
He left around four years ago and for the past two years has been working as a dive instructor, most recently in Thailand.
Olly Manning spoke of his joy at being told that his missing brother was alive after fearing the worst. Mr Manning, from Willand, Devon, said: "We were so happy to find out he had survived – it was a huge relief.
"I've spoken to him and he's absolutely exhausted – they all are. He's OK – though covered in cuts and bruises and very dehydrated. It's been such a massive shock for him and everyone involved.
"He was on the way to a hospital when I spoke to him. He just wanted to let us know he was OK and that he was being cared for. It was touch and go. It could so easily have worked out badly."
