Khosrow Khosravani, from Marina del Rey, had only recently learned to sail when his newly acquired skills were called upon to carry out the rescue of a woman offshore from the Southern California coastline.

“I am still shaking about the horror she faced for 12 hours in darkness in the ocean with no life jacket or anything whatsoever,” Khosrow wrote.

On Sunday September 26, Khosrow was helming his 1982 Catalina 25, Defiant, from Marina del Rey (MDR) to Malibu. This was his “first attempt” to sail outside the harbor aboard the boat he had bought in August. Less than two weeks earlier, on September 14, he had become an ASA (American Sailing Association) Certified Sailor after completing ASA 101 and103.

Khosrow had three guests onboard, none of whom were sailors. During the coming rescue they would each play a role in bringing the distressed woman onto the boat.

“I noticed her thanks to a pod of dolphins.” Khosrow and his guests were watching the dolphins when they saw a hand waving. “She had no life jacket, and was just treading water.”

It would later appear that the woman had gone for a swim alone, at almost midnight on Saturday. Due to some unknown difficulty she was unable to return to shore and was found the next morning, a few miles offshore.

“She is a true fighter, who defied the odds and survived in the cold water,” Khosrow said.

Khosrow added that once Defiant‘s crew had the woman onboard they issued a Mayday call. “[She was] barely conscious but could tell us that she was alone and that I did not have to look for other survivors in the vicinity.”

“We covered her with a warm blanket and gave her water. Then within 10 minutes or less, the Coast Guard sent a rescue boat. The young lady survived and is in stable condition at Ronald Reagan Hospital at UCLA. Praying for her well-being …  And thanks to my three guests on the boat for staying calm and following my rescue instructions. Buying this cheap sailboat was a blessing.”

Khosrow said that according to local authorities, it is quite common for young people in the area to swim off the beach late at night.

We’ll share the full story of the rescue in an upcoming issue of Latitude 38. In the meantime, Khosrow’s last words on the subject: “Stay safe. Life is so precious.”

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Latitude 38

After 12 hours stuck at sea off the coast of Marina Del Rey, a woman was saved last month by a sailor who happened to spot her hand while marveling at a pod of dolphins.

On Sept. 26, Khosrow “Koz” Khosravani and a group of friends embarked on a sail from Marina Del Rey to Paradise Cove in Malibu. During the trip, Khosravani spotted a pod of dolphins and decided to deviate from the route to get a better view. That’s when he saw something unusual.

“I saw a hand,” he says. “If it wasn’t for the dolphins, I would have never seen this lady, who only had a few minutes to live.”

MARINA DEL REY, Calif. — Koz Khosravani recently moved to Marina del Rey and just learned how to sail on his own, but he is already getting recognized around the harbor. That’s because the story of what he accomplished one Sunday morning in September has had a ripple effect.

Los Angeles rescue boat captain, Matt Rhodes, remembers the call he received on Sept. 26.

“What Koz and his guests did aboard his boat that day was just tremendous,” explained Rhodes.

Khosravani was embarking on his first sailing voyage outside the marina harbor with three guests. Their destination was Malibu.

Before they left, Khosravani gave his passengers a crash course in sailing safety.

“I was lucky, I gave all my three guests training on how to rescue someone who goes overboard,” he said.“I was lucky, I gave all my three guests training on how to rescue someone who goes overboard,” he said.

About three miles off shore, the passengers saw a pod of dolphins. That’s when Khosravani noticed something else.

“And that’s when I saw a hand waving,” he said.

Khosravani can recount every detail of the intricate effort it took to pull aboard a stranded victim.

“How do you get someone who is almost unconscious, almost like a dead weight, into the boat?” he said. “She was all slippery.”

A woman who had gone skinny dipping at midnight in Santa Monica had been swept out to sea. By the time Khosravani and his passengers found her, she had been in 60 degree water for nearly 12 hours.

Khosravani radioed for emergency response. Capt. Rhodes arrived on scene and assessed the victim. “Mid-twenties female on board their vessel, wrapped in blankets. She clearly was exhausted, looked weak and to be suffering from hypothermia,” recalled Rhodes, who was able to initiate the woman’s transfer to the UCLA Medical Center.

“I don’t think she could have sustained being out there very much longer based on how she was presenting to us when we got on scene. She’s really lucky not only that they were the ones that spotted her, but they were the ones that were there because he was prepared, he was trained,” Rhodes said.

The woman lived because Khosravani was prepared.

Khosravani hasn’t been able to speak with her since saving her life, because her identity is protected. He has to wait for her to make contact. But he thinks about the young woman a lot, because she gave him a new perspective on life.

“Besides the fact I would say to her, ‘I’m so happy you are alive,’ I would say, ‘You have a second chance, make it count.’ That applies to my life too after this experience,” he said. “I suddenly feel like life is fragile and you should live it every day because you never know what is going to happen.”

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Inside Edition

MARINA DEL REY, Calif. — Koz Khosravani recently moved to Marina del Rey and just learned how to sail on his own, but he is already getting recognized around the harbor. That’s because the story of what he accomplished one Sunday morning in September has had a ripple effect.

Los Angeles rescue boat captain, Matt Rhodes, remembers the call he received on Sept. 26.

“What Koz and his guests did aboard his boat that day was just tremendous,” explained Rhodes.

Khosravani was embarking on his first sailing voyage outside the marina harbor with three guests. Their destination was Malibu.

Before they left, Khosravani gave his passengers a crash course in sailing safety.

“I was lucky, I gave all my three guests training on how to rescue someone who goes overboard,” he said.“I was lucky, I gave all my three guests training on how to rescue someone who goes overboard,” he said.

About three miles off shore, the passengers saw a pod of dolphins. That’s when Khosravani noticed something else.

“And that’s when I saw a hand waving,” he said.

Khosravani can recount every detail of the intricate effort it took to pull aboard a stranded victim.

“How do you get someone who is almost unconscious, almost like a dead weight, into the boat?” he said. “She was all slippery.”

A woman who had gone skinny dipping at midnight in Santa Monica had been swept out to sea. By the time Khosravani and his passengers found her, she had been in 60 degree water for nearly 12 hours.

Khosravani radioed for emergency response. Capt. Rhodes arrived on scene and assessed the victim. “Mid-twenties female on board their vessel, wrapped in blankets. She clearly was exhausted, looked weak and to be suffering from hypothermia,” recalled Rhodes, who was able to initiate the woman’s transfer to the UCLA Medical Center.

“I don’t think she could have sustained being out there very much longer based on how she was presenting to us when we got on scene. She’s really lucky not only that they were the ones that spotted her, but they were the ones that were there because he was prepared, he was trained,” Rhodes said.

The woman lived because Khosravani was prepared.

Khosravani hasn’t been able to speak with her since saving her life, because her identity is protected. He has to wait for her to make contact. But he thinks about the young woman a lot, because she gave him a new perspective on life.

“Besides the fact I would say to her, ‘I’m so happy you are alive,’ I would say, ‘You have a second chance, make it count.’ That applies to my life too after this experience,” he said. “I suddenly feel like life is fragile and you should live it every day because you never know what is going to happen.”

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Spectrum News

Most of the time, when a sailing skipper rescues someone from the water, it’s one of the crew who fell overboard, and it’s usually a man (85%), but not this time. ASA Student Khosrow Khosravani, with three friends. embarked upon the maiden sail of Khosrow’s Catalina 25 Defiant on the morning of Sun 26 Sep 2021 out of Marina del Rey, CA. Their plan was to head up the coast to Paradise Cove, off Malibu, and swim ashore for lunch. An hour into their trip, under an overcast sky upon a bluish-gray sea, Khosrow was motor-sailing when his eye caught a pod of dolphins swimming right to left across his bow, away from the shore, further out into Santa Monica Bay. The next thing that he sees, or thinks that he sees, just above the surface, is a human hand amidst the dolphins’ frolic. Then, sailing closer, Khosrow spotted the pale shape of a young woman with black hair. She was nude and barely afloat. Without skipping a beat, Khosrow’s ASA training automatically kicked into gear. It was only two weeks earlier that Khosrow, for the first time ever, stepped aboard a 25-foot sailboat to earn his ASA 101 and 103 at Blue Pacific Yachting Sailing School in Marina del Rey with ASA instructors Frank Duke and Frances Weber.

Khosrow “Koz” Khosravani, former Teaching Fellow in Computer Science at Harvard University Summer School and Extension School, had just moved to Marina del Rey in July 2021. “I saw that everyone here had a sailboat, so I bought one too”. To learn how to sail Defiant, Koz obtained his California Boater’s Card and enrolled in courses with ASA. “One thing that the ASA Instructors at Blue Pacific taught me was how to pull someone out of the water if they went overboard. They taught me this not just once, but many times. It was all fresh in my mind”. Koz knew just how to maneuver his boat in a Figure-8 COB recovery and approach the woman from downwind of her so as not to strike her head bobbing in the water. “When I was about 10 feet away, I tossed her the PFD-4 cushion, but she wasn’t able to hold onto it. She had zero muscle power and could barely move”. Koz made another pass and this time asked his crewman to throw over an Acelane Water Rescue Bag with a 70-foot (reflective) red rope. “She was able to hold onto that rope, so my crew pulled her to the port side of my boat”. Meanwhile, Koz shut down his 9-hp Yamaha outboard engine. “I was concerned about hitting her head against the hull, so I lowered a rope ladder that I had bought only the day before”. Koz intertwined his feet within rungs of the rope ladder in the water, grabbed the woman under the arms, and hoisted her onboard with the help of his crewman. Koz works out at Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach! He’s also a former boxer, wrestler, and has a karate black belt, but it was still difficult for both men to pull that young woman out of Santa Monica Bay and into the boat. Once in the cockpit, Koz asked the woman if there was anyone else in the water. She could barely speak, but she was able to reply that she was the only one out there.

Koz placed the woman in the care of his two crewwomen and called “Mayday” on his VHF radio. From his GPS, Koz was able to relay his position. He was about three nautical miles off Pacific Palisades and it was 1130. About six miles away, L.A. County Fire Department Ocean Lifeguard Captain Matthew “Matt” Rhodes heard the call. He reached Koz’s boat seven minutes later. The woman’s skin was ashen. “This was a really weird one”, relates Captain Rhodes. “Why was this person so far offshore”? The young woman was raced to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, treated three days for hypothermia, and then released. It turned out that the woman, in her mid-20s, went swimming nude around midnight the night before off Venice Beach and drifted out to sea. She had been afloat in 68-degree water for nearly twelve hours with no clothing and no flotation.

 

 

 

Captain Rhodes told Koz that, “Without you there, she would have died”.  Koz, 59, replied that he does wonder about how everything aligned just right for this young woman. “I came [to the United States] in 1978 from Iran. I do not practice religion and I am not that spiritual. I am a scientist and I do not believe in divine intervention, but thank God for all that did go right that day! The important thing is to be prepared. When I was buying my safety gear and taking my ASA classes, some people said why do you spend so much money? Just go out and teach yourself. But I told them they are wrong. This is serious business. I used all the equipment that I bought and everything that I was taught by my ASA Instructors to save that woman. Before my friends and I left the dock that day, I talked with them for an hour about how to use the safety equipment and the radio in case I fell off the boat. I wanted them to be able to come back to get me! I told them that will never happen and we’ll never need to use the safety equipment but it’s good to know just in case”. My ASA Instructors at Blue Pacific Yachting Sailing School taught me well. ASA should be proud that they spent so much time with me about safety. I was only sailing for two weeks, yet my friends and I were able to save the life of that young woman with the help of those dolphins!”.

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Sail World Cruising