Elizabeth Webster and Alexander Burckle traveled to Hawaii on their honeymoon in October 2021. The dream vacation was spiced up with a snorkeling trip at the small island of Lanai, near Maui, with Maui Sail Company. Along with 42 other passengers, they left Maui at ten in the morning – and once there they were told they had an hour to swim around in the ocean before the boat moved on.
After a while, the water became increasingly unmanageable, even though they are both experienced snorkelers, and they began to swim back towards the boat.
– When they started swimming towards the boat, they noticed that it still seemed to disappear further and further away, says their lawyer Jared Washkowitz to Hawaii News Now.
– They continued to swim towards it, but it continued to disappear further away, until they realized that the boat had actually left the place and that they had been abandoned in the water.
According to Washkowitz, they had also swum farther from shore when they followed the boat. Now they were over a kilometer from the nearest shore – and the sea was getting wild. According to the lawsuit, the waves were up to two and a half meters high and their only choice was to head for Lanai, which their guides advised against. But after 20 minutes of fighting in the sea, they managed to get ashore – according to the report, exhausted and dehydrated. Once at Lanai, they were helped by locals who happened to drive past the deserted beach.
Did several control calculations
Webster and Burckle claim the Maui Sail Company didn’t even know they were missing until the couple called from Lanai — despite doing check counts.
– It was completely disorganized. Everyone was moving, so they could easily be missed, says Jessica Herbert who was on the same tour,
She says the boat stopped at one more place before returning to Maui.
– How could you have done it and again miss during the control count. They made the same mistake twice, she says.
Elizabeth Webster and Alexander Burckle are now suing the company Maui Sail Company for just over SEK 50 million.
