- A 44-year-old Salvadoran woman went overboard from Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas early Friday, October 9.
- She was found conscious inside a lifebuoy roughly 20 hours later by the cargo ship MSC Rossella III.
- She reportedly told rescuers she jumped because she "wanted to disembark." A prosecutor ordered a psychiatric evaluation.
- The cruise ship helped search and skipped its scheduled stop in Naples.
Greek authorities got the alert early Friday. Someone had gone into the sea from Odyssey of the Seas, which was heading from Mykonos to Naples and sitting about 72 nautical miles southwest of Zakynthos at the time. Open water. Around 133 kilometers from the nearest coast.
Greece's Joint Search and Rescue Coordination Center passed the word to the port authorities at Zakynthos, Katakolo and Pylos. Two coast guard boats went out. So did a Hellenic Air Force Super Puma helicopter. Merchant ships in the area were told to change course and look, and the cruise ship joined in too.
Passengers aboard posted online that the captain addressed everyone around 10 a.m., saying a woman had gone overboard earlier that morning. One passenger wrote that by late Friday the search was about 14 hours old and nothing had turned up. Royal Caribbean hasn't confirmed any of that.
Searchers did come across an overturned circular lifebuoy at some point. Seventy nautical miles out, a person in the water is invisible unless a ship or aircraft is already nearby, which is why the lifebuoy's light mattered so much. Then, in the early hours of Saturday, October 10, the crew of the MSC Rossella III saw a small light flashing on the water. The ship is a Madeira-flagged containership and had been helping with the search. The woman was inside a lifebuoy, awake. The crew called it in, a coast guard patrol boat came alongside, and she was pulled out and given first aid.
Twenty hours, according to the coast guard. The coverage muddles the dates a bit. Alert: early Friday, October 9. Found: early Saturday, October 10. Fox's version, citing the Greek Foreign Ministry via USA Today, has the ship sailing near Zakynthos "on Saturday," but the coast guard's own timeline puts the alert on Friday. A Fox News video caption says nearly 24, and Greek Reporter's early write-up said 12 and put the rescue on Sunday, but the coast guard spokesperson gave AFP the 20 figure and that's what most outlets ran with. Marine Insight reported mild hypothermia. Passengers wrote that she could walk once she was on land.
The gear is described a little differently depending on who you read. The coast guard's own wording has her found inside a circular lifebuoy. A couple of maritime sites say lifebelt, and one says she was wearing it. Maybe it's the same gear described loosely. The reports don't settle it. What they agree on is the flashing light attached to it, which is what the freighter's crew saw.
Greece's Foreign Ministry told USA Today she's a national of El Salvador.
The patrol boat took her to Katakolo, a port on the western Peloponnese, and from there she went to a hospital in the nearby town of Pyrgos for medical observation and further examinations. A local prosecutor ordered a psychiatric evaluation, a coast guard officer told AFP on Monday.
That same officer relayed what she told her rescuers. She jumped, she said, because she "wanted to disembark." It's a secondhand line, passed along by a spokesperson, and it's all anyone has publicly on her reasons. The prosecutor's order isn't a diagnosis or a finding of any kind. Beyond the hypothermia reports, no medical details have come out.
Nobody has independently checked her account, and Greek authorities haven't offered a fuller explanation. The coast guard's first public statement said outright that it hadn't been established how she ended up in the water, or how she got hold of the lifebuoy. Her name hasn't been released.
Royal Caribbean told CNN Greece it started rescue efforts right away, according to Greek Reporter. Fox News Digital said it contacted the cruise line for comment. The Fox story doesn't include a reply.
On that leg the ship was heading from Greece toward Italy, and the Ionian crossing is where it all happened. Odyssey of the Seas is 347 meters long, about 167,700 gross tons, with room for roughly 4,200 passengers. Bahamas flag. Baird Maritime reports the ship dropped its planned Naples call because of the search, and passengers say it later carried on toward Civitavecchia, the port for Rome.
This isn't the only recent case Royal Caribbean has dealt with. Fox News points to a separate incident last year, when a man jumped off the line's Rhapsody of the Seas in San Juan, Puerto Rico, reportedly to get out of nearly $17,000 in gambling debt. He survived. Fox doesn't connect the two cases, and nothing in the Greek coast guard's statements does either.
The Hellenic Coast Guard hasn't put out anything further on the Ionian Sea rescue.
