A Good Reason to Carry an EPIRB - Mexican Fishermen Found after 11 Months at Sea!
I would imagine they were given up for dead quite a while ago. But as the this article suggests:
Early reports suggested the fishermen had been lost at sea for about three months and drifted more than 8,000 km (5,000 miles) before they were found by a Taiwanese tuna fishing trawler in waters between the Marshall Islands and Kiribati on August 9.
But Eugene Muller, manager of Koo’s Fishing Co. Ltd in the Marshall Islands capital of Majuro, said it now appeared they had been at sea much longer than that in an extraordinary story of maritime survival.
“The first report was three months, but after that we got some more word from the ship that it might have been since last September,” Muller told Reuters by telephone from Majuro.
“It’s a pretty long way from where they’re from. It’s more than three months,” he said.
The fishermen may have been adrift in a 25 ft fiberglass boat since last September. If true, this is quite a tale of survival and luck to be able to gather enough food and fresh water through the months. While I was a missionary in Cape Verde, we heard multiple tales of local fishermen spending a few months in the Central Atlantic after getting blown clear of the islands in storms and then getting picked up off Brazil. As my post title suggests, there are good reasons to carry an EPIRB (or at least a marine VHF) whenever wandering offshore.
In case you’re wondering where the Marshall Islands and Kiribati are in relation to Mexico (pan the map left and right to see markers for each island, Google Maps has a known error when displaying across the international date line):
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:14 pm
[…] CNN.com offered more details and more questions about the story we reported last week about 3 Mexican fishermen found over 5000 miles from Mexicon in the Western Pacific. Quoting from the article: “They read the Bible aloud, prayed — and tossed overboard the bodies of two dead companions they said starved to death. The government said Tuesday it would investigate the deaths and other aspects of the survivors’ account. … With no shelter onboard, the men protected themselves from the sun with blankets and set about doing what they knew best: fishing. They crafted lines from cables and hooks from springs in the boat’s motor. […]