Gulf of Mexico kayaker rescued in Miss. River

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A Louisiana kayaker seeking to become the first person to paddle alone across the Gulf of Mexico was rescued from the Mississippi River Thursday, almost 40 miles east of where he planned to land.

Arthur Hebert, 40, was battling high winds and strong currents when he accepted a lift from a Coast Guard cutter, 20 days after setting out from Isla Mujeres on Mexico's Caribbean coast, Coast Guard Senior Chief Daniel Lamont told Reuters.

"He's in fairly good condition -- exhausted and very thirsty -- but he did what he set out to do. He made it from the Yucatan, across the Gulf, to Louisiana," Lamont said.

"He did the right thing," Lamont added. "As exhausted as he was, he could never have made it upriver."

The Coast Guard sent out boats and a helicopter to look for Hebert after reports from workers on a Texaco-owned rig eight miles from the mouth of the river that the kayaker was adrift and needed help. He spent the night tied up to the rig.

A spokesman for Hebert's support team, Andrew McAllister, told Reuters Hebert was washed off a lift when rig workers tried to get him onto the platform in rough seas.

"He got back in his kayak, righted it, and began to float while a Chevron chopper and boat kept him in sight," he said.

"Then Arthur got it together and began paddling again. He was in the Mississippi River when he was picked up," McAllister said from Grand Isle, La., where Hebert's family and friends have gathered to await his arrival.

"Thank God he's safe," said Hebert's mother, Helen Willis of Waveland, Miss. "At the early reports that he was in trouble we just fell apart, thinking he was lost in the water."

Hebert left Isla Mujeres in a 17-foot kayak, carrying a first aid kit, two hand-held desalination pumps for drinking water, bags of dried fruit and nutrition bars, a VHF radio, flares, binoculars, lifejackets, a satellite-based Global Positioning System and a spear to fend off sharks.

He communicated through a portable digital tracker called Argos which continually beamed his position to satellites.

Lamont said Hebert was expected to arrive at the Coast Guard station in Venice, La., the southernmost part of the state accessible by road, about noon CDT.

Hebert's family was en route to pick him up, McAllister said. "Once the medics check him over, we're taking him home."