Briton Who Fell off Liner Hails Croatian Rescuers

A British woman whose cruise holiday went disastrously wrong when she fell overboard in the middle of the night has hailed Croatia's rescue services for saving her life.

Kay Longstaff, 46, tumbled off the back of the Norwegian Star as it was cruising from Venice to Greece along Croatia's long Adriatic Coast.

She spent the next ten hours about 60 miles off shore in open sea before the Croatian Coast Guard finally spotted her at around 9.45am on Sunday and airlifted her to the town of Pula, in Istria, where she is recovering.

Experts attributed Longstaff's remarkable survival from a terrifying ordeal to the calmness of the sea, the warmth of the water in August and her own fitness.

"Thee wonderful guys rescued me. I am very lucky to be alive," Longstaff told Croatian TV in Pula, adding that she had kept her spirits up in the middle of the sea by singing.

Lovro Oreskovic, of the Cavtat rescue ship, said they were happy to have saved a human life.

Falling off a cruise liner is extremely rare, according to National Geographic.

It noted only 17 cases in 2017 - a minute fraction of the estimated 20 million people who take cruises each year.

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