Woman rescued from Lynn Harbor

LYNN – A local woman is safe after being stranded on a disabled jet ski in Lynn Harbor for nearly two hours Monday evening while her boyfriend – the only one of the two who could swim – swam to Nahant to get help.”She was dry and very scared,” said Lynn Fire and Rescue Lt. Ronnie Patterson, who helped bring the woman from the still-floating jet ski to safety at the boat ramp at Blossom Street Extension.Ingrid Mejia and Jorge Correa were on Correa’s jet ski Monday when the vehicle’s motor suddenly quit around 5 p.m. Correa said. He swam to Nahant – a distance he estimated at about two miles, and the longest distance he said he had swum since he was a boy – after failing to get the attention of nearby boaters.Correa said that a motorist picked him up on the Nahant Causeway and drove him to the area near the Lynn Yacht Club where he called police. Police said the call came in at 6:24 p.m. and fire and rescue crews responded to the Blossom Street Extension boat ramp where they launched a rescue boat.”All you could see was an object on the water,” Patterson said, noting it took 20 minutes at 5 mph for the boat to reach the location of the jet ski.Bystander Tom Drillis was fishing at the boat ramp when the rescue crews arrived. He had a pair of binoculars and spotted the woman drifting between Mile Markers 6 and 7 by the shipping channel, just before the harbor becomes open ocean.”There’s always something exciting going on down here,” Drillis said. The fishing, he said, was “catch me if you can,” but referring to Mejia, he acknowledged they made “a good catch tonight.”Safely onshore at approximately 7:30 p.m., Correa said that the couple goes jet skiing frequently and that they had never had problems before.He said that he wasn’t nervous about swimming, but Mejia was nervous about staying on the disabled jet ski. Mejia didn’t speak English, but Correa smiled at her response when asked if she would take any more jet ski trips.”She said she thinks she’s not going to go again.”Asked if she would take swimming lessons, Mejia nodded.The disabled jet ski was brought ashore at the same time as Mejia and Correa loaded it aboard a trailer and towed it away.