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- May 28, 2007
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- 78
Fishermen rescued after nine months adrift on the ocean
From Catherine Philp in Washington
NINE months after Lucio Rendón Beccera set sail on what was to have been a three-week fishing trip, his mother still refused to give him up for dead. As others began chanting the novena, the nine days of prayers to guide a departed soul to Heaven, she clung steadfastly to the belief that her son and his friends were alive.
Then news of a miracle reached his village of El Limón, in the Mexican Nayarit region, from a lonely stretch of water Señor Rendón and two of his friends had been found adrift in the North Pacific, 5,000 miles from home, sunburnt and scrawny but alive.
Their rescuers, the crew of the Taiwanese tuna boat Koos 102, had no idea how far the men had come until they faxed their hand-scrawled names to the Marshall Islands. When the names of Salvador Ordóñez Vásquez, Jesús Eduardo Vidal López and Señor Rendón reached port, they set in motion a chain of calls that led all the way back to their astonished relatives in Mexico. Only when Mexican television contacted the men by ship radio did the full extent of their ordeal emerge. They lived on raw fish, seabirds and rainwater squeezed from rags, and fended off despair with readings from the Bible.
The fishermen said that they had set out from El Limón on October 28 in a 9m (30ft) boat on a shark-fishing trip. The trouble started when the mooring line broke in deep water and petrol for the outboard motors ran out, leaving the boat at the mercy of the Pacifics powerful trade winds. The men had no radio or mobile phone on board and only a few days supply of water and food. To survive, they dismantled their useless engines and used cables and wires to fashion fishing lines and hooks. We ate raw seagulls and fish, Señor Vidal, 27, told Televisa from the Koos 102. We ate everything raw. Any fish that came near the boat, we grabbed it and gulped it down. For water, they put rags out to collect rainwater, then squeezed the cloths over their mouths. Although rain fell nearly every day, food was less common. Sometimes our stomachs hurt because we would go up to 15 days without eating, Señor Vidal said. There were times when we only had one bird to share among the three of us.
The men drifted for weeks without seeing another vessel until they began to cross the trade routes of the east. Many times they saw ships coming towards them and jumped up and down on the deck with joy, thinking that they were about to be rescued. When the ships passed by they cried in anguish. We never lost hope because theres a God Almighty and I have a lot of faith in Him, Señor Vidal said. I knew He was going to help us.
On August 9, they were resting on the deck of the boat when they suddenly heard the noise of engines behind them. The Koos 102, spotting the craft in the distance, had sailed towards it to investigate. Initially the crew of the Koo thought that the men had been adrift only a little while, but the men were adamant about their time at sea, having kept a note of the days by scoring notches on the wooden deck. It was nine months and nine days, Señor Vidal said. One of the guys . . . has a watch that shows the months and the days.
One report, citing the shipping companys manager, said that two other crew members who set out with the men had jumped overboard in the first days of their ordeal and were now presumed dead but the men made no mention of lost crewmates in their interview.
We cant believe weve been saved, Señor Vidal said. We ask ourselves have we been dreaming, are we on the boat? Back in Mexico, news of the rescue was greeted as nothing less than a gift from God. Im trembling all over and I think Im going to have a heart attack, Saúl Ordóñez, a cousin of two of the men, told the Los Angeles Times. They went fishing and they never came back. We thought they were dead.
Others refused to give up hope. My mother refused to pray the novena for him, Remigio Rendón said. She said Lucio was still alive. And she was right.
SALTY TALES
# Last year three fishermen spent seven weeks in the Pacific, surviving on sharks blood and rainwater. They had set off from Kiribati when a tropical storm swept their dinghy, 6m (20ft) long, into open water. They were rescued by a New Zealand Air Force aircraft
# In 1820 a whale rammed and sank the ship Essex 2,000 miles (3,220km) off South America. Twenty of the crew escaped on three small boats. Each boat resorted to cannibalism. Eight sailors survived
# In 1942 during the Battle of the Atlantic a tanker, Athelknight, was sunk by submarine U-172. The submarine surfaced alongside, giving survivors a bucket and some bread. The 26 survivors sailed a lifeboat 1,000 miles in 28 days, landing near Antigua
# The 1973 book Survive the Savage Sea recounts the tale of a family whose yacht was attacked by killer whales, leaving the two parents, their three children and a hitch-hiker adrift in a liferaft in the Pacific for 38 days with three days of rations
For those that are interested, there is a great short paperback book called, "Adrift" written by a guy that spend 76 days in an inflatable liferaft..the book is based on the diary he kept. Amazing story that never became a movie...
From Catherine Philp in Washington
NINE months after Lucio Rendón Beccera set sail on what was to have been a three-week fishing trip, his mother still refused to give him up for dead. As others began chanting the novena, the nine days of prayers to guide a departed soul to Heaven, she clung steadfastly to the belief that her son and his friends were alive.
Then news of a miracle reached his village of El Limón, in the Mexican Nayarit region, from a lonely stretch of water Señor Rendón and two of his friends had been found adrift in the North Pacific, 5,000 miles from home, sunburnt and scrawny but alive.
Their rescuers, the crew of the Taiwanese tuna boat Koos 102, had no idea how far the men had come until they faxed their hand-scrawled names to the Marshall Islands. When the names of Salvador Ordóñez Vásquez, Jesús Eduardo Vidal López and Señor Rendón reached port, they set in motion a chain of calls that led all the way back to their astonished relatives in Mexico. Only when Mexican television contacted the men by ship radio did the full extent of their ordeal emerge. They lived on raw fish, seabirds and rainwater squeezed from rags, and fended off despair with readings from the Bible.
The fishermen said that they had set out from El Limón on October 28 in a 9m (30ft) boat on a shark-fishing trip. The trouble started when the mooring line broke in deep water and petrol for the outboard motors ran out, leaving the boat at the mercy of the Pacifics powerful trade winds. The men had no radio or mobile phone on board and only a few days supply of water and food. To survive, they dismantled their useless engines and used cables and wires to fashion fishing lines and hooks. We ate raw seagulls and fish, Señor Vidal, 27, told Televisa from the Koos 102. We ate everything raw. Any fish that came near the boat, we grabbed it and gulped it down. For water, they put rags out to collect rainwater, then squeezed the cloths over their mouths. Although rain fell nearly every day, food was less common. Sometimes our stomachs hurt because we would go up to 15 days without eating, Señor Vidal said. There were times when we only had one bird to share among the three of us.
The men drifted for weeks without seeing another vessel until they began to cross the trade routes of the east. Many times they saw ships coming towards them and jumped up and down on the deck with joy, thinking that they were about to be rescued. When the ships passed by they cried in anguish. We never lost hope because theres a God Almighty and I have a lot of faith in Him, Señor Vidal said. I knew He was going to help us.
On August 9, they were resting on the deck of the boat when they suddenly heard the noise of engines behind them. The Koos 102, spotting the craft in the distance, had sailed towards it to investigate. Initially the crew of the Koo thought that the men had been adrift only a little while, but the men were adamant about their time at sea, having kept a note of the days by scoring notches on the wooden deck. It was nine months and nine days, Señor Vidal said. One of the guys . . . has a watch that shows the months and the days.
One report, citing the shipping companys manager, said that two other crew members who set out with the men had jumped overboard in the first days of their ordeal and were now presumed dead but the men made no mention of lost crewmates in their interview.
We cant believe weve been saved, Señor Vidal said. We ask ourselves have we been dreaming, are we on the boat? Back in Mexico, news of the rescue was greeted as nothing less than a gift from God. Im trembling all over and I think Im going to have a heart attack, Saúl Ordóñez, a cousin of two of the men, told the Los Angeles Times. They went fishing and they never came back. We thought they were dead.
Others refused to give up hope. My mother refused to pray the novena for him, Remigio Rendón said. She said Lucio was still alive. And she was right.
SALTY TALES
# Last year three fishermen spent seven weeks in the Pacific, surviving on sharks blood and rainwater. They had set off from Kiribati when a tropical storm swept their dinghy, 6m (20ft) long, into open water. They were rescued by a New Zealand Air Force aircraft
# In 1820 a whale rammed and sank the ship Essex 2,000 miles (3,220km) off South America. Twenty of the crew escaped on three small boats. Each boat resorted to cannibalism. Eight sailors survived
# In 1942 during the Battle of the Atlantic a tanker, Athelknight, was sunk by submarine U-172. The submarine surfaced alongside, giving survivors a bucket and some bread. The 26 survivors sailed a lifeboat 1,000 miles in 28 days, landing near Antigua
# The 1973 book Survive the Savage Sea recounts the tale of a family whose yacht was attacked by killer whales, leaving the two parents, their three children and a hitch-hiker adrift in a liferaft in the Pacific for 38 days with three days of rations
For those that are interested, there is a great short paperback book called, "Adrift" written by a guy that spend 76 days in an inflatable liferaft..the book is based on the diary he kept. Amazing story that never became a movie...