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Full of Life : 2 Women Adrift in Sea for 21 Days Never Lost Hope

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From Times Wire Services

Two California women who spent 21 days aboard a crippled motorboat and were presumed dead in the Indian Ocean said Wednesday that they never doubted they would survive.

“We kept each other strong,” Judy Gale Schwartz said. “And we talked about food, chocolate shakes, pizza . . . Food was the subject that kept us going.”

Schwartz and Rickey Ellen Berkowitz, both 26 and close friends since their childhood in Rancho Palos Verdes, looked fit and in high spirits as they told a press conference their supply of peanuts, pineapple, bread, eggs and cookies ran out after 10 days. From then on, they said, they lived on rainwater and daily dabs of toothpaste.

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“We never thought we were going to die,” said Schwartz, now a Palo Alto resident who teaches in San Mateo. “We talked about our futures, our lives--but food most of the time. . . .”

The two women and two Indonesian crewmen had been given up for lost, but were found by fishermen after their 16-foot boat crashed into a reef off the coast of Sumatra and overturned on Sunday, spilling all four into the sea.

Schwartz had lost up to 20 pounds, while Berkowitz, a Pasadena hospital executive, had lost eight. Both Indonesians were taken to a hospital suffering from dehydration and shock.

The women told reporters that they broke down when they learned that a memorial service had been scheduled for them on Tuesday.

Instead, a reunion is expected upon their scheduled arrival in Los Angeles today.

The pair set out in the chartered motorboat on Aug. 17 from Carita Beach, 84 miles southwest of Jakarta, to visit the Ujung Kulon wildlife preserve on the southwestern coast of Java. Their engine soon broke down, and they began to drift.

After the first day, they said, they began rationing food. After a week, they rigged up a poncho, sarongs and tent canvas as a sail. They had a compass but found it difficult to steer. A few fishing boats and freighters sailed past but failed to spot them.

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Both said they had stomach cramps and intestinal pains, but Berkowitz observed, “I was amazed how little hunger I felt.”

When their last drop of water was gone, Berkowitz recalled, “I said, ‘Well, here we are in the middle of the ocean with no water.’ ”

Land finally appeared, and their boat struck the reef. Berkowitz said, “I lost Judy, and every time we came up for air, we were calling for each other. Then I felt the ground, but my legs were like rubber. I lay flat and the tide brought me in.”

The exhausted survivors were found 168 miles from where they had started.

In the meantime, their parents had come to help the Indonesian government in the search but had left in despair after a week, convinced that the two women were dead.

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