Woman, Man Rescued From Raritan Bay After Jet Ski Became Disabled

RARITAN BAY, NJ — Members of the New York City Fire Department rescued a man and a woman from Raritan Bay Tuesday afternoon, after their Jet Ski became disabled and was unable to start.

The man was found still on the disabled Jet Ski, but the woman had fallen off and was carried away by the current, said the fire department. New York City firefighters said they pulled her from the water just as she was starting to enter the Raritan Bay shipping channel.

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At about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, FDNY Marine 8 received a call from the U.S. Coast Guard that there was a personal watercraft in distress in Raritan Bay.

New York City firefighters, in a boat, found the disabled Jet Ski about one mile off the shoreline of Ideal Beach in Middletown.

A man on the Jet Ski told firefighters his female passenger had fallen off; he was unable to restart the Jet Ski and lost sight of her in the water.

Firefighters brought him onto their boat. Using a track line search pattern, they was able to locate the woman floating in the water approximately 600 yards (1,800 feet) away, as she was entering the Raritan Bay shipping channel.

She appeared exhausted and was struggling to keep water from her mouth, said the FDNY. They threw a rope to the woman and brought her aboard, where she was wrapped in a blanket and treated for hypothermia, despite the muggy heat of Tuesday.

"Thanks to the swift actions and teamwork of Marine 8, both individuals were taken to Keyport municipal boat ramp, where they were transferred to EMS for further evaluation and treatment," said the FDNY in a Facebook post they put up about this incident Wednesday.

It is unknown if the man and woman were wearing life jackets.

Last August, a woman from Elizabeth survived an overnight floating in the Atlantic Ocean off Sandy Hook after the Jet Ski she was on similarly stopped working.

She was with a man, and both were riding a Jet Ski when the engine stalled out under the Verrazzano Bridge at about 8 p.m., as the sun was starting to set.

Both were knocked off the Jet Ski as the waves picked up. They were both wearing life jackets, but they drifted far apart from each other into Lower New York Bay.

The man drifted to Staten Island, where firefighters found him the next morning on a beach. He was severely dehydrated and vomiting blood.

But the current carried the woman farther out, and she floated for 12 hours overnight in Lower New York Harbor off Sandy Hook. The woman survived the night floating in the ocean and firefighters found her the next morning in about 10 feet of water near Romer Shoal, an isolated lighthouse on a small rock outcropping about two and a half miles off Sandy Hook.

Read her story: Woman Who Survived Overnight Floating In Lower New York Bay Tells Her Story (August 2025)