“I want to survive.” That was uppermost in Senior Seaman Michael Coccon Johen’s mind while he was drifting in the South China Sea, hours after a free-fall parachute training exercise went wrong.
It happened during the drill’s second jump at 4.30pm, when a sudden change in weather severely affected visibility.
“We were about 10km (six miles) away from the island when we jumped from the helicopter. From 9,000 to 4,000 feet (2,700 to 1,200 metres), we were still moving towards the island,” Johen told the media at state Deputy Transport Minister Henry Harry Jinep’s service centre in Bau, Sarawak, on Tuesday.
“But from that point on, our parachutes stopped moving forward because the wind changed suddenly. So we landed in the sea at about 5pm.”
Thanks to his training, he did not panic but waited for help from the navy’s safety vessels. However, the vessels could not reach them because the waves were too high.