Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Seagoon on August 17, 2006, 11:02:34 PM
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Fishermen survive months at sea eating birds
By Gunther Hamm Thu Aug 17, 10:26 AM ET
SAN BLAS, Mexico (Reuters) - Three Mexican fishermen have been rescued after drifting for about nine months across thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean in a small boat, an ordeal they survived by eating raw birds and fish and drinking rain water.
The shark fishermen said on Wednesday they left their home town of San Blas on Mexico's Pacific coast in November and were blown 5,000 miles off course after their 25-foot (8-meter) fiberglass boat ran out of gas and they were left to the mercy of the winds and the tides.
Their families had given them up for dead, but they found a way to survive in what appeared to be one of the most impressive feats of endurance on the high seas.
"We ate raw fish, ducks, sea gulls. We took down any bird that landed on our boat and we ate it like that, raw," Jesus Vidana, one of the three survivors, said in a Mexican radio interview from the ship that rescued them.
The news stunned friends and relatives.
"It's truly a miracle. Everyone is very happy," said Jose Guadalupe Guerra, a town hall official in San Blas.
"Everyone found out from the television. A cousin of one of them fainted from the shock. His grandfather also got very emotional -- they'd written them off as dead," he said.
The odyssey finally ended when Vidana and the other two men, identified as Salvador Ordonez and Lucio Rendon, were rescued a week ago by a Taiwanese tuna fishing trawler in waters between the Marshall Islands and Kiribati.
"They were very skinny and very hungry," Eugene Muller, manager of the fishing firm that found them, said on Wednesday.
NEVER GAVE UP
The three men were sunburned but otherwise in good health. Vidana said they always believed they would be found.
"We never lost hope because we were always seeing boats. They passed us by, but we kept on seeing them. Every week or so, sometimes we'd go a month without seeing one, but we always saw them so we never lost hope," he said.
They were lucky to be picked up in the end because they were fast asleep and only noticed the rescue boat was coming for them when they heard its engine.
Details of the extraordinary journey were sketchy. First reports said they were lost for three months but relatives confirmed Vidana's version that they left nine months ago.
"I lived so sad. ... Now that I know my grandson is alive, I am very happy. I just want him to come home soon," Rendon's grandmother, Francisca Perez, told the Televisa news station.
"There are no words to express it. The emotion here is very strong because we thought they were dead," said Efrain Partida, a fellow fisherman in San Blas, which was once a Spanish port and is known for its bird life, tropical jungle and voracious mosquitoes and sand flies.
Mexico is sending an official to meet the survivors in the Marshall Islands and help bring them home when the trawler that picked them up returns to port in a couple of weeks.
San Blas is home to thousands of fishermen and many have battered old boats without radios or life-saving gear, Guerra said. "The fishermen here are very rudimentary. Most don't comply with navigation rules and the authorities don't demand it either."
Among other recorded cases of people surviving long periods stranded at sea, in 1942 a Chinese sailor named Poon Lim survived four months alone in the South Atlantic after a German U-boat torpedoed the British merchant ship he was working on.
In 1789, British Vice Adm. William Bligh was set adrift after the famous mutiny on "The Bounty," a merchant ship he commanded. He and 18 loyal crew members then made an impressive six-week journey to safety in Timor.
(Additional reporting by Paul Tait in Sydney and Catherine Bremer in Mexico City)
Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060817/od_nm/mexico_fishermen_dc
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This one says 11 months (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2006-08-16T121644Z_01_L1658830_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEXICO-FISHERMEN.xml&src=rss&rpc=22)
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Nine... eleven... long damn time...
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WOW!!! <
>
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Bligh could have made landfall anytime he wanted, he was not adrift, but navigating, he sailed right through the Fijian groups...Eddie Rickenbacker did well for a couple weeks...
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Gonna be rich men.
I smell a best selling book and a movie
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"Bligh could have made landfall anytime he wanted, he was not adrift, but navigating, he sailed right through the Fijian groups..."
In Bligh's defence, it must be noted that Fiji at that time was full of hostile cannibals, and he had already lost a crewman to the natives on Tofua. They did later land on some small unpopulated islands.
J_A_B
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Originally posted by J_A_B
"Bligh could have made landfall anytime he wanted, he was not adrift, but navigating, he sailed right through the Fijian groups..."
In Bligh's defence, it must be noted that Fiji at that time was full of hostile cannibals, and he had already lost a crewman to the natives on Tofua. They did later land on some small unpopulated islands.
J_A_B
May be me personally.
But I would pretty much view any cannibal as "hostile" LOL
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"May be me personally.
But I would pretty much view any cannibal as "hostile" LOL"
You're quite right, that was a bit redundant. I should be sleeping; friggin insomnia sucks.
J_A_B
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Geeez anything over 2 days adrift is a long time to me. Whether its 9 or 11 doesn't matter the simple fact that they drifted from off the coast of Mexico to the Marshall Islands and survived is simply amazing.
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I can't wait to learn about this..
survival in "extremis" is of interest to anyone who goes away from shore, and really, to every human being. The translations of this experience are inadequate so far, so I look foward to a translation that can tell us the whole story...
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Originally posted by J_A_B
"Bligh could have made landfall anytime he wanted, he was not adrift, but navigating, he sailed right through the Fijian groups..."
In Bligh's defence, it must be noted that Fiji at that time was full of hostile cannibals, and he had already lost a crewman to the natives on Tofua. They did later land on some small unpopulated islands.
J_A_B
In the Fijian's defence, they were not hostile, just superstitious.
They had this idea that if you lost your boat, then you were bad luck & should be eliminated.
This was exactly what happened about a day after they ate you.
Mutiny on the Bounty authored by Lafayette Escadrille pilots James Norman Hall & Charles Nordhoff also of interest...
(http://www.acepilots.com/wwi/hall_hofa.jpg)
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Somehow I *knew* one of their names would be "Jesus" ;)
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shoulda just got up and walked home then.
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Originally posted by Furball
shoulda just got up and walked home then.
:rofl :aok