A Hawaiian snorkeling company is being sued for $5 million by a California couple who claim they were abandoned at sea by their tour guides.
Elizabeth Webster and her husband, Alexander Burckle, were two of the 44 passengers who signed up for Sail Maui’s Lanai Coast snorkel tour during their honeymoon in September 2021, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court last month and obtained by NBC News.
The snorkeling tour, which took place on a small island near Maui, was set to last from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. All the boat’s passengers entered the water at the first location around 10:50 a.m. and were to return to the boat an hour later.
When the couple tried swimming back at 11:50 a.m., the lawsuit says that choppy conditions prevented the newlyweds from traversing the waters. They struggled for about half an hour in the water and tried to signal for help from the crew, but the boat instead drove off to its next snorkeling location.
“Plaintiffs realized the vessel had left them and was not coming back for them, and they decided that their only option for survival at that point was to return to shore,” the lawsuit reads. “Plaintiffs were extremely fearful and nervous about the decision because they were told in the safety briefing explicitly not to swim to Lanai and that shallow reefs were in the area.”
The newlyweds made the half-mile swim to shore and reached land around 1 p.m., where they were dehydrated and fatigued. Local passersby found them and offered aid.
Jared A. Washkowitz, the couple’s attorney, told Business Insider that Sail Maui’s tour guides didn’t set boundaries for where swimmers should snorkel and didn’t identify a lifeguard for the excursion.
The attorney also said that the boat crew did two prior headcounts that came up at 42 people, before doing a third that said all 44 passengers had returned to the ship — despite the couple still being at sea.
“It was just too disorganized,” Jessica Hebert, who was also on the tour, told Hawaii News Now. “Everybody kept moving, so they easily got missed.”
Mr. Washkowitz told the station that “It was basically a traumatizing event where they thought they were going to die and they thought their spouse was going to die.”
The couple are seeking damages for emotional distress and negligence.
