2023-07-17 09:21:12
He was with his dog Bella when a storm damaged his boat and he was left without communication. To survive, he ate raw fish and drank rainwater.
A miraculous event occurred near the coast of Mexico, where an Australian sailor was rescued alive after survive for more than two months adrift in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
The survivor, identified as Tim Shaddock, 51, was found last week in a damaged boat, with his dog Bellaafter the helicopter accompanying a tuna boat sighted it off the coast of Mexico.
“It’s been an ordeal (…) I’ve been alone on the high seas for a long time,” said Shaddock, in a video published by Channel Nine on Australian television, where he appears very thin, with a bushy gray beard and long hair, but lucid when specifying that he just needs “a rest and a good meal” now.
The sailor and his pet left the Mexican coastal city of La Paz in April for French Polynesia, however, a strong storm damaged the boat and their electronic equipment, preventing them from communicating to ask for a rescue or continue with their journey of about 6,000 kilometers.
In order to survive on the high seas while waiting for someone to rescue him, Shaddock he ate raw fish and drank rainwater. And to avoid sunburn, the man and his pet spent their time under a boat awning.
The Australian sailor and his pet left the Mexican coastal city of La Paz in April for French Polynesia.
A doctor who was traveling on the tuna boat said that the survivor is “stable and in very good” health, while they head back to the mainland.
This maritime episode starring Shaddock is reminiscent of the movie “Cast Away”, starring Tom Hanks, about the story of a man who spends several years on an island in the Pacific.
As expressed by the professor of Human and Applied Physiology at the University of Portsmouth Mike Tipton to the Australian channel 9News, the finding of Shaddock alive was a mixture of “luck and skill” and compared it to finding “a needle in a haystack.”
The doctor who was traveling on the ship that found him said that the Australian sailor was in “stable and very good” health.
“People need to appreciate how small the ship is and how vast the Pacific is. The chances of anyone being found are pretty slim,” Tipton said.
In January 2014, the Salvadoran castaway José Salvador Alvarenga was rescued in the Marshall Islands after surviving about 13 months on the high seas by eating raw poultry and fish, and drinking turtle blood, his own urine and rainwater.
With information from EFE.
ES
look also
#Australian #sailor #adrift #Pacific #Ocean #months #rescued #coast #Mexico