It was supposed to be a fun parasailing trip for a mother, father and daughter from Utah, but it took a turn for the worse when the line towing them snapped.
32 year-old Amanda Goodsell says she is in a lot of pain from the bruises she suffered, but is happy to be alive.
"Well I thought I was going to die. I mean, I really realized I could not do it very much longer," Goodsell said.
Amanda Goodsell is happy to have survived a parasailing accident off Kewalo Basin on Saturday.
Goodsell says it was her second time up that day, when about a minute into the ride the line broke.
"It’s not like we hit the ocean very hard. We kind of floated down and when that parachute came down, the wind hit it and it was like a rocket literally pulled us backwards, full speed," Goodsell said.
Goodsell says her husband, Jeff and her 7 year-old daughter Kennedy were all parasailing together.
"That parachute caught the wind, it was like a rocket. It literally was like a rocket pulling us through the water," she said.
While she and her husband and daughter were going in one direction, the boat they were attached to went the opposite way.
"I think it was between 10 to 15 minutes across the ocean before the boat ran over the parasail to stop it from dragging us," she said.
She says the Hawaiian Parasail crew acted fast.
The most painful part, she says, was trying to keep her head above water while still attached to the parachute.
"It literally put me into a back bend four times that I remember of, just the bobbing and then I went out," she said.
With Amanda not conscious her husband tried to keep their daughter safe.
She says her daughter came out of her life vest and had to tread water before she was rescued.
"I really did not think it would go on for as long as it did. I thought it would pull us maybe for a little bit and then it would stop and it just didn’t. It just didn’t stop and it got so violent," she said.
Goodsell was the only one hospitalized. Her husband and daughter were not injured.
"There needs to be some training for these people that go up because if I had released myself early on and my husband had released himself they would’ve picked us up from the boat and it would have been over," she said.
The owner of Hawaiian Parasail did not return our calls for comment.
The family says the company offered to pay for all medical bills so the family does not plan to sue.
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According to the Coast Guard, this is the second time in a little over a year that Hawaiian Parasail has had a cable snap.
The Coast Guard says in March last year, the same boat "The Wind Warrior" was towing two parasailers, when the line broke.
Officials say both were adults, and one of them had a concussion and black eye from the accident.
"Parasailing can be a risky activity in certain weather conditions, so that’s something that needs to be examined not only on a local level but we’re going to make some recommendations up our chain of command based on the findings to see if there is anything we can do to mitigate the risk involved," said Cdr. Jason Neubaurer of the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard says there are no federal regulations for parasailing.
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
