Pacemaker Fishing Forum

August 17, 2006
Fishermen Survive 9 Months on High Seas
By Gunther Hamm, Reuters
SAN BLAS, Mexico -- Three Mexican fishermen have been rescued after drifting for
about nine months across thousands of kilometers 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 Wednesday that they left their home town of San Blas on
Mexico's Pacific coast in November and were blown 8,000 kilometers off course
after their 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 an
impressive feat 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.

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. 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 sadly. ... 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 channel.

"There are no words to express it. The emotion here is very strong," 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 two
weeks.

San Blas is home to thousands of fishermen, many of whom 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 Admiral 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.