Calif. Women Adrift at Sea Ate Toothpaste to Survive

Two California tourists who were given up for lost three weeks ago made it safely to shore after the small boat they had been drifting on broke up, the U.S. Embassy said today.

They said they survived on toothpaste and rainwater as they drifted in Indonesia’s treacherous Sunda Straits.

The two tourists, Rickey Ellen Berkowitz of Rancho Palos Verdes and Judith Gail Schwartz of Palo Alto, both 27, and their two Indonesian boatmen were found on a beach in good condition after swimming ashore Sunday night, embassy spokesman Gerald Huchel said.

“They must have been very healthy,” he said. “They survived on rainwater and spun out four or five days of provisions,” finally turning to eating toothpaste, he said.

The four disappeared after setting out Aug. 17 in a 16-foot outboard motorboat on a 50-mile trip to a remote island game preserve near Krakatau volcano at the southern end of the Sunda Straits.

Local residents gave them up for lost after Indonesian authorities mounted a major rescue operation but failed to find them.

The survivors were forced to swim for their lives after pounding waves crushed their frail boat, whose motor had failed along the coast of southwest Sumatra.

The Ujong Kulon reserve, home of the rare Java rhinoceros, attracts scientists and nature lovers from all over the world. It can be reached only by sea.

The embassy spokesman said the women had talked to embassy staff, who got in touch with their parents in the United States. “They were ecstatic,” he said of the parents.