A British holidaymaker told yesterday how he and his girlfriend survived 19 hours in shark-infested waters after a diving trip went horrifically wrong.
Richard Neely, 38, and partner Alison Dalton, 40, drifted for nearly a day off Australia's Great Barrier Reef as rescuers failed to spot them waving frantically.
They tied themselves to each other in their wetsuits and, huddling together for warmth, they drifted for NINE MILES after surfacing too far from the boat they had dived off.
Agonisingly, they were only 200 metres from the boat to start with and could see it clearly - but those on board could not see them over the waves or hear their cries for help.
When a helicopter finally arrived, the chopper's crew couldn't see them either, even though they were hovering virtually overhead.
Eventually, suffering from hypothermia, they were plucked to safety - just after a highly-venomous sea-snake reared up in Alison's face.
Last night, as the couple recovered on dry land, they told their inspirational story to the Sunday Mirror.
Richard said: "I truly thought we were going to die. Sharks were on our mind the entire time - but neither of us mentioned the 'S' word.
"We just had to stay positive and calm to help each other through the ordeal and not think about being eaten alive."
Richard and Alison's extraordinary ordeal - a real-life version of the movie Open Water - began at a beauty spot called Paradise Lagoon.
They failed to surface close enough to the catamaran which had dropped them off for a routine one-hour dive.
Four fellow divers returned to the boat at the agreed time of 3pm, but there was no sign from the boat of Richard and Alison.
Yet, incredibly, they were just 200 metres away from the vessel, unseen despite their whistles and frantic waving and dangerously drifting further away in the growing swell. The boat searched for three hours but as night fell and it became too dark to continue looking for the couple, it headed back to shore.
"To start with, we were just 200m from the boat, which normally wouldn't be a problem. We would just swim back," explained Richard.
"But the wind and waves had got up and it just took us away from the reef. We were signalling. I had my surface marker buoy, a very long inflatable yellow sausage about two metres long, and I had a whistle.
"We were shouting and whistling but nobody saw us. We saw other divers climbing back on to the boat and lifting out their equipment.
The boat stayed where it was, on a mooring, but we just kept drifting further away. There was nothing we could do. We were helpless.
"We tried to swim to a big buoy we could stand on, but we couldn't make it. The current was too strong and there was no point in using up all our energy.
"We were still hopeful they would come and look and see us, but the waves had picked up and the sun was behind us, so maybe they just couldn't see us."
At about 4.15pm they saw the boat moving away, but by then Richard and Alison had drifted a further half a kilometre away.
As night fell, Richard reassured Alison that by now the rescue services would have been alerted by the captain and help was on its way.
"I told her we'd be fine. Get back on the boat, have a coffee and everything would be fine."
By now, the couple had been in the water almost six hours.
Richard said the inspiration for his idea to share his body heat with his girlfriend was former SAS soldier Andy McNab's book Bravo 2 Zero. He improvised by using a six-metre length of rope from his marker buoy - used by divers to signal the point at which they have gone underwater - doubled over, to tie himself and Alison together. At that point they jettisoned oxygen tanks and water belts to make themselves lighter and enable them to "fin" - a streamlined form of swimming.
Every half an hour, they huddled together, wrapping their legs around each other and pressing their stomachs together for warmth through their wetsuits. Alison, in particular, was feeling desperately cold.
But the strong tie meant they could not drift further than three metres apart throughout the night, shouting out to each other to make sure the other was awake.
Richard, of Swaffham, Norfolk, would then order Alison to flip on to her back so they could again fin along in the water. The first time they did this, at 9.30pm, they saw the first rescue helicopter.
"I shouted: 'Look, look, there's a helicopter. They're here. They're coming for us.' But they didn't see us," said Richard. "It was devastating to see them go round in their search pattern and then fly off into the distance.
"But we assumed they were going to refuel. I kept reassuring Ali they would come back. Then we would have a cuddle and get more body head and then fin for a while and cuddle again.
"Sure enough, they came back every 45 minutes, did the same kind of search pattern, but I think with the wind and the two-metre waves, we weren't getting any closer.
"They obviously hadn't realised we had drifted so far. When the choppers stopped flying around at about 2.30 to three o'clock in the morning - we had no choppers for about three hours because the weather was so bad - both of us lost it. We had a lot of silence. Both of us would catch each other with our eyes shut, about to give up."
Once he was safely back in hospital, Richard confessed to Alison he was scared sharks would come around to feed at daybreak.
"Because I'd seen the Open Water movie (in which two divers go missing off the Great Barrier Reef after losing their boat) I was very concerned about being stranded adrift in the same way, but I didn't mention it to Ali. I couldn't bring my self to mention it because that would have been too much. As a dive guide, I know the best time to see sharks out and about is the crack of dawn.
"I knew when the sun is rising, the sharks look up to the surface and there were Ali and I floating and splashing, with my very big yellow marker buoy splashing on the surface.
"We were both very well aware of that but we didn't mention it to each other. Fortunately, we didn't see any shark fins in the water - not like in the movie. We were very lucky there were no Tiger sharks around in deep water because they breed in that part of the southern Barrier Reef."
Time was the great enemy for the couple as they fought against the tide and the darkness to stay awake. Richard was monitoring their position by compass, well aware of where the dive boat was, and timing everything on his dive watches.
"I was aware we had been in the water for 19 hours by the time we were finally rescued. From the start, I told Ali: 'We are going to get through this'. I told her we were going to get very, very, very cold and we just had to be super-strong and I convinced Ali we could survive.
"All through the night, we were sharing body warmth. If I could see Ali getting weak, or Ali could see me getting weak, one of us would shout 'I love you' to get a response so we knew we were awake.
"I really didn't think I could make it through the three, four, five o'clock time. Nor did Ali. We were hallucinating, seeing everything from robots to reefs and colourful fish in the sky and speaking a bit of gibberish.
"At that stage we thought we might close our eyes and sleep forever. But I told Ali we have a young relationship and we have far too much more to do with our lives. She is the most amazing person I've ever met and we will go on and live our lives the way we are meant to."
Although he did not tell his girlfriend, Richard thought he might be close to the end and was turning over a plan in his head to record his last will and testament on his underwater video camera.
Richard, a diving instructor who lives on a boat off the coast of Phuket, Thailand, said: "I was planning to make a video of myself to leave all the details of my possessions in Thailand for whoever found it, so my dad could come from England to sort them out, and also leave a video of us saying 'goodbye' to our loved ones and each other.
"By the time it got to that stage, I didn't have the energy to lift up my camera any more and hold it in front of my face. I didn't really want to admit to myself that I am doing this because I'm going to let myself die.
"But once daylight was coming, along with warmth from the sun, we thought: 'OK. We're going to get picked up. But then with all of the choppers going past us but not seeing us, our hopes faded. We thought: 'Oh my God, please - how can they not see us?' and we thought over the next two hours maybe we were not going to picked up that day. I wouldn't have been able to last into the next night. We had bad moments. In the morning the shark thought popped into my head again. But I thought 'Rich, don't even go there'.
"I said to myself, 'This is really, really bad. This is a major drama. We're going to be on television... that kind of thing. We had to actually admit to ourselves, we could die here."
When rescue finally did come, it was swift and dramatic. As black clouds gave way to sunshine, Richard realised they had been seen by a fixed wing aircraft with an infrared seek and search unit.
It was quickly followed by a rescue helicopter, heading straight for these two little black dots in the swirling ocean.
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American Alison, who runs a British-style pub in Sacramento, California, and is a qualified dive master, was winched out of the water first, followed by Richard.
At the moment of their rescue at 8.40am yesterday morning, it was a deadly sea-snake which almost claimed Alison's life.
The rescue helicopter was forced to winch the rescuer back up and move away as the venomous snake reared up right in Alison's face. "It startled me as it put its head out of the water and its face was in my face. They are one of the most deadly poisonous snakes in the world if they bite you, so I quickly swam away from it," she said.
On the helicopter, they were wrapped in blankets and foil covers to help combat hypothermia and given small sips of water by a medic to rehydrate them.
After medical checks on nearby Hamilton Island, the exhausted couple were helicoptered to Townsville Base Hospital, Queensland, but released after several hours rest and recuperation.
As he shared a kiss and a DRY cuddle with the love of his life, Richard looked back on the surreal experienced and said: "We have been out of the water for more than 12 hours now and it seems like it happened years ago.
"It does seem like a very surreal dream. We're both in a bit of a daze at the moment. We're both so happy to be alive."
Alison, had nothing but praise for Richard, her boyfriend of just nine months. She said: "I think we saved each other's lives. Richard is an amazing man. I would not be here without him.
"This terrible experience had definitely brought us closer together. We had an amazing relationship before, but to survive something like this together is bound to tie us as one forever."
Richard trained with his father as a cabinet maker before becoming a full time diving instructor working overseas about ten years ago.
His dad, widowed father-of-three Stuart, said: "He started diving as a hobby and then he just got totally into it and decided to go to Thailand where he became an instructor.
"He has a brilliant lifestyle and enjoys every minute of it. He is nearly 40 now and I can't do anything to change him."
Richard and Alison are on holiday in Australia after Richard finished his most recent posting as an instructor in Thailand.
They visited Richard's sister Rachel, 35, who lives in Melbourne before travelling up to the Great Barrier Reef to go diving.
Stuart said: "I never realised anything had happened until Richard telephoned me at 9am from the hospital where he and Ali were being treated for hypothermia and salt water burns.
"He said, 'Have you heard?' and I replied, 'No'.
"Then he told me how they had been adrift for 18 hours and had strapped themselves together.
"He told me he was OK and there was no problem. Ali is a diving instructor as well so they both knew what to do.
"It didn't really sink in what had happened until I later saw the TV pictures of him being rescued by the helicopter. I haven't seen the film Open Water - but I am definitely going to get it now."
Amazingly, their neardeath experience has not put Richard and Alison off diving. Asked about their future plans, Richard replied: "To get back in the water as soon as possible. This is certainly not going to put us off. We hope we'll be partners for life after this."
As a police inquiry into the incident got under way, Shannon Platt, whose company Ozsail charters the Pacific Star, said she was delighted the couple were safe and well.
She said she was confident the boat's crew had followed protocol.
How events unfolded
Wednesday: Richard and Alison board Pacific Star at Airlie Beach.
Thursday: Sail to Bait Reef for a dive.
Friday: Two dives, then after lunch a dive at Paradise Lagoon. 3pm: Surface 200m from boat. Waves up to two metres make swim back impossible. 4.15pm: Skipper moves boat to look for couple, now half a kilometre away. Air-and-sea search starts. Richard waves marker buoy and fires his camera flash - to no avail.
Saturday: 3.30am: Bad we at her ends search. 6am: Search resumes. 8.45am: Rescue helicopter hovers above. Attempt to pluck up Alison aborted as deadly sea snake surfaces beside her. Alison swims away. Second bid succeeds. 9am: Richard rescued. Flown to Hamilton Island then air-lifted to Townsville Base Hospital for medical checks. 7pm: Released into the care of friends in Townsville.
He cheated death three times before
Richard's escape was the third time he has cheated death in four years, his father Stuart revealed last night.
He was caught up in the tsunami that hit Asia on Boxing Day, 2004 while working as a diving instructor in Phuket, Thailand.
But he managed to get out of his hotel and reach higher ground.
Later his diving boat sank off Thailand and he was forced to tread water for eight hours through the night until he was picked up by another boat.
Retired cabinet maker Stuart, 60, said: "I am quite used to him being in hairy situations. It seems he is a born survivor.
"He is a very cool and calm character who knows exactly what to do in emergencies. I am just glad that he and Ali are fine."
Ordeal so like a horror movie
Alison and Richard's amazing rescue has echoes of the horror movie Open Water, which was itself based on a real-life tragedy.
Two divers lost in the same area are believed to have been eaten by sharks after being abandoned by their dive boat.
Husband and wife Thomas and Eileen Lonergan, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were among a group of 26 divers who boarded the vessel MV Outer Edge for a trip to the Great Barrier Reef in 1998.
Both experienced and qualified, they dived as "buddies" for several hours before surfacing to find the boat had left without them.
It was two days before anyone realised they were missing - the captain had not counted his passengers to make sure all were aboard.
It was only when he realised Lonergans' bag was still on the boat, with wallet and papers in it, that he raised the alarm.
The couple had been 40 nautical miles offshore in shark-infested waters.
A month later, their scuba vests were found washed up 100 miles away. Five months later a diving slate, used to communicate underwater, was found with the message: "We've been abandoned by MV Outer Edge. Help!"
Their bodies were never found. The captain, Jack Nairn, was tried and cleared on charges of manslaughter.
The only explanation has come from local diver Ben Cropp, who blamed tiger sharks. He told the inquest into the Lonergans' disappearance: "They just circle and watch. They may do this for an hour before moving closer and may follow you for another hour before they take that first bite, and then you don't have a hope."
The Lonergan tragedy was turned into a movie - billed as Jaws meets The Blair Witch Project - in 2004. It depicts the couple clinging together, getting wearier and wearier, surrounded by sharks, until they are finally dragged beneath the waves.
