The USS Peleliu was diverted from its journey to homeport San Diego in order to search for two distressed British boaters who'd been reported missing in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean, roughly 500 miles west of Midway Atoll.
The trouble started when the UK-based Marine Rescue Coordination Center Falmouth reported to the U.S. Coast Guard in Hawaii that a British man had fallen overboard from a sailboat on Sunday, and the woman who remained on the boat didn't know how to operate it.
According to a Coast Guard news release, a Navy helicopter plucked the woman on the boat from danger:
The Peleliu deployed two MH-60 helicopters at approximately 5 a.m. to conduct search patterns. One MH-60 helicopter conducted a basket hoist and rescued the crewmember from the sailing vessel.
The British newspaper The Sun reports the woman who was rescued was airlifted to Peleliu, where "she is understood to be uninjured."
The search for the man who fell overboard continues.
