# Sailor Rescued After 66 days



## Binnacle (Jul 22, 2005)

A sailor who spent two months lost at sea has been rescued after apparently surviving on raw fish and rainwater.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-32172646

Apparently ?


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## Basil (Feb 4, 2006)

Hmm, not sayin' he did and not sayin' he didn't.


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## John Rogers (May 11, 2004)

He looks to be very well fed.


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## Hugh Ferguson (Sep 4, 2006)

*Poon Lim*

This guy was 133 days on a raft


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## John Rogers (May 11, 2004)

Hugh, I read about this survival when I was a kid in school,they said he may have ate some of his shipmates to keep alive, or was that from another story of the war.


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## howardws (Aug 15, 2009)

He's managed to keep himself looking very fit and judging by the size of him must have caught a lot of fish!


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## jmcg (Apr 20, 2008)

All a bit fishy to me including the rescue tanker with containers as deck cargo.(EEK)

BW

J(Gleam)(Gleam)


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## welshpaddy (Feb 2, 2014)

where was his 2 months growth of beard very fishy


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

jmcg said:


> All a bit fishy to me including the rescue tanker with containers as deck cargo.(EEK)
> 
> BW
> 
> J(Gleam)(Gleam)


Houston Express is a container ship (Hapag Lloyd?). In the eyes of the press, all non nanal ships that aren't cruise ships are "tankers".

I'm saving up my underpants in case I want to go fishing.

John T


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## cueball44 (Feb 15, 2010)

howardws said:


> He's managed to keep himself looking very fit and judging by the size of him must have caught a lot of fish!


Maybe the forgot to say that he weighed 300 pounds when he set out to do some fishing.


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## spongebob (Dec 11, 2007)

cueball44 said:


> Maybe the forgot to say that he weighed 300 pounds when he set out to do some fishing.


That was the case some years ago when an elderly overweight Maori fisherman went missing from the Bay of Plenty coast , Te Kaha if I remember correctly . After drifting for about a month in an open boat and surviving on fish and water distilled from the sea using a plastic bag he came ashore looking lean and fit.
Photographs before and after plus his skin condition left no doubt about his ordeal though.

Bob


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

It was the chips that kept his weight up.

John T


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## ben27 (Dec 27, 2012)

good day binnacle.sm.today.01:32re:sailor recoverd after 66 days.it sounds feasable.there seems to some doubt.so i give him the benefit of same.thanks for posting regards ben27


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## Bill.B (Oct 19, 2013)

This was in our local rag today as the front page spread. We have had very windy and rough conditions lately and also sunny days. I am afraid he doesn't look like he has been out there that long on an upturned boat like the story says. I think this isn't the whole story by far. I sat on the beach at Virginia Beach yesterday for two hours and got a sunburned face. The picture of him getting off the chopper shows someone who looks better looked after than I do on a slow work day! Fishy!


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## Mad Landsman (Dec 1, 2005)

Does anyone else think of 'All is lost' with Robert Redford? 
That was a fiction and the hero looked worse for wear than this chap does. 

If he had been in a life raft, with shelter and basic kit, then it would lean towards wholly believable. 
This man is said to have been on an upturned hull - no shelter, no platform, no protection at all? Is that an accurate report? How did he sleep? How did he collect rainwater?

Too many questions - Hopefully USCG will seek some plausible answers.


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## Mad Landsman (Dec 1, 2005)

*Further pondering....*

It occurs that maybe the press reports are a little misleading (perish the thought!). 
IF The boat was knocked over and dismasted disabling comms etc. 
It then restores to upright but disabled providing shelter and a relatively safe refuge. 

Against this - He would have had stored food and water and maybe a galley which would have kept him going for as long as he could manage it before resorting to rainwater and sushi. 

If his intention was to go to sea in the boat surely he should have considered some form of EPIRB - I wonder if he had one, or even flares, on board.


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

The story has hit the news Downunder and the rescue ship has been upgraded to Container Ship. His boat has been downgraded from "fishing boat" to "yacht". He has been downgraded to "inexperienced".

Maybe the Container Tanker should have left him adrift in what may have been a dhow. Err on the side of caution I always reckon.

John T


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## stevekelly10 (Apr 3, 2012)

Whilst I was onboard the Stena Queen, we rescued a fisherman from the Seychelles that had been adrift for a considerable amount of time, as we recieved the initial distress message on our way up the gulf. we then loaded,went up to Ain Sukna (Red Sea), discharged, went back up the gulf to load and then sailed for the States when we picked him up ! so some considerable time he'd been missing! I will give our Captain considerable praise as he managed to manouvre our fully loaded 459.000 dwt ULCC alongside his 21ft dinghy at the second attempt, as the fisherman was in no state to help himself ! Initially there was 2 of them in the boat, we only found one ! he claimed his companion had died from drinking seawater, so he had pushed him overboard ! We were all a bit sceptical as to the fate of his companion, as the survivor was not in that bad condition, considering the amount of time he'd been adrift. we picked him up some 3000km from the Seychelles ! He too claimed he caught fish to survive and had no water left of the small amount they had to begin with? We eventually dropped him off at Capetown. whilst onboard he was terrified to leave the confines of the ship's accomodation and would not go out on deck!


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## DMA (Mar 1, 2005)

Tonto me thinks something fishy Kemo Sabe...


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

Mad Landsman said:


> It occurs that maybe the press reports are a little misleading (perish the thought!).
> IF The boat was knocked over and dismasted disabling comms etc.
> It then restores to upright but disabled providing shelter and a relatively safe refuge.
> 
> ...


Perhaps, but we really should expect the evidence to determine whether he should have a Darwin award. Should he be a Darwin competitor I resent him being allowed an EPIRB (or would do if I were still that involved). Almost within hours of mandatory carriage the rescue MRCCs were already wont to research ownership and veracity of the received 'message' before responding with IMO rushing to impose absurd 'maintenance' requirements so as to be seen to counter false alarms.


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## petermac (Dec 2, 2006)

I smell a very large rat that has just been rescued! Don't believe it for one minute, he is to healthy looking for 66 days. Perhaps it was a jurno typo? 66 instead of the actual 6?


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## Bill.B (Oct 19, 2013)

Today's news in the Virginia Pilot the Norfolk paper adds more info.
It now says the yacht was knocked over in bad weather but then righted itself. It then did it again so he cut off the mast to stop it. However it rolled over again afterwards. He said he was catching rainwater in a bucket. He also claims he broke his collarbone on the first capsize so he had to bail one handed! He prayed when the weather got bad and when it was nice read his bible. When he was picked up the injury wasn't bothering him and he did not want to go to hospital. When he left the skies were perfectly fine and so were the waves so decided to head offshore to go fishing. Never looked at a forecast. Incidentally this winter/spring has been one of the windiest I can recall in 28 years here. 
Hmmmmmmmmmmm


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## Sister Eleff (Nov 28, 2006)

Perhaps the collar bone was only bruised, after all he didn't have X-ray to prove the diagnosis. A lot of men think a bone is broken when in fact it is not (Hippy)


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

petermac said:


> I smell a very large rat that has just been rescued! Don't believe it for one minute, he is to healthy looking for 66 days. Perhaps it was a jurno typo? 66 instead of the actual 6?


Agreed but it is easy to confirm. Wait until he is back in condition and put him back out there again whilst keeping him under observation (from a distance don't want bite marks on the staff).


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

The USCG seem to be playing along with it and they're no dummies. I'm struggling to come up with a reason for him to fake it. What would be the point?

John T


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## R58484956 (Apr 19, 2004)

To be a hero?


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## Chris Isaac (Jul 29, 2006)

Its not only the state of him that's fishy, it's where he was, only 200 miles from where last seen. In that time and in the Gulf Stream he should have almost crossed the Atlantic.


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## William Clark8 (Feb 15, 2013)

trotterdotpom said:


> The USCG seem to be playing along with it and they're no dummies. I'm struggling to come up with a reason for him to fake it. What would be the point?
> 
> John T


DOLLARS DOLLARS DOLLARS


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## weebobby (Mar 17, 2013)

trotterdotpom said:


> The USCG seem to be playing along with it and they're no dummies. I'm struggling to come up with a reason for him to fake it. What would be the point?
> 
> John T


Insurance maybe???


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