n1zm0
02-05-2014, 08:36 AM
A year and a month on his fiberglass boat eating turtles :nut:, if the story is true, it's amazing to think in such an age where we have tons of shipping lines and such through both oceans that you could spend a year on a boat without being noticed, the world's oceans are that massive.
Majuro, Marshall Islands (CNN) -- It's an alleged true-life story that trumps Hollywood's latest castaway tale.
Thirteen months adrift at sea (maybe more). Thousands of miles traveled. Survival with only what nature and the elements provided.
Jose Salvador Alvarenga washed up on a remote coral atoll in the Marshall Islands last week in a heavily damaged boat. He said he had been living off fish and turtles he had caught and relying on rainwater, and sometimes his own urine, to drink.
He said he had been lost at sea for 13 months, after setting off from southern Mexico -- thousands of miles to the east. Many questions remain about how he could have lived on his small boat for so long as it drifted across the ocean.
Scientifically, his ordeal is plausible. But is it probable?
Alvarenga told CNN in an exclusive interview that he left from a port called Paredon Viejo in Mexico's Chiapas state in December 2012.
A Mexican newspaper visited the nearby hamlet where Alvarenga lived near Mexico's Pacific Coast. Local fishermen there say they remember Alvarenga and the day he went to sea and didn't come back.
They recall the date of departure being in November, a month earlier than the castaway remembers.
Boats went looking for him and his boat companion. The state sent an airplane to search for him.
"All of my fellow fishermen were elated because this is nothing short of a miracle. I have no words to describe the joy I felt when I learned he was alive. He's a wonderful human being and I'm glad he made it," Bellarmino Rodriguez Beyz, owner of Alvarenga's boat, told CNN.
He said the boat was equipped with a GPS system and radio communication, but both systems got wet and stopped working when a storm hit.
"When they told me that a boat had appeared with somebody on board I had no doubts," Rodriguez said. "I recognized Alvarenga immediately when I saw his picture. It couldn't be anyone else. The boat and the registration number check."
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/04/world/asia/marshall-islands-castaway/
http://static.euronews.com/articles/255374/606x341_0401-castaway-returns.jpg
If Alvarenga's story proves true, the trip across the Pacific would have taken him across roughly 6,600 miles (10,800 kilometers) of open ocean before ending in the Marshall Islands, about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, in the northern Pacific.
Officials in the islands say they have no reason to doubt what he has told them so far, the Mexican ambassador said.
Such an amazing journey isn't unheard of in the small Pacific nation, as three Mexican fishermen made a similar drift voyage in 2006 that lasted nine months. Those men lived off fish they caught and rainwater, and they read the Bible for comfort.
Conditions in the Pacific make the timeline of Alvarenga's journey plausible, said Judson Jones, a producer for CNN Weather.
Jones said that given the average currents between Mexico and the Marshall Islands, it would have taken less than a year to travel from the origin to the end in the strongest average currents. If the trip did indeed take 13-1/2 months, it means his boat would have averaged about 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) a day. But Jones said a meandering journey in and out of the currents was most likely.
http://tribfox40.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/s030567981.jpg
http://www.independent.co.uk/migration_catalog/article5242071.ece/BINARY/original/13newsci.jpg
Majuro, Marshall Islands (CNN) -- It's an alleged true-life story that trumps Hollywood's latest castaway tale.
Thirteen months adrift at sea (maybe more). Thousands of miles traveled. Survival with only what nature and the elements provided.
Jose Salvador Alvarenga washed up on a remote coral atoll in the Marshall Islands last week in a heavily damaged boat. He said he had been living off fish and turtles he had caught and relying on rainwater, and sometimes his own urine, to drink.
He said he had been lost at sea for 13 months, after setting off from southern Mexico -- thousands of miles to the east. Many questions remain about how he could have lived on his small boat for so long as it drifted across the ocean.
Scientifically, his ordeal is plausible. But is it probable?
Alvarenga told CNN in an exclusive interview that he left from a port called Paredon Viejo in Mexico's Chiapas state in December 2012.
A Mexican newspaper visited the nearby hamlet where Alvarenga lived near Mexico's Pacific Coast. Local fishermen there say they remember Alvarenga and the day he went to sea and didn't come back.
They recall the date of departure being in November, a month earlier than the castaway remembers.
Boats went looking for him and his boat companion. The state sent an airplane to search for him.
"All of my fellow fishermen were elated because this is nothing short of a miracle. I have no words to describe the joy I felt when I learned he was alive. He's a wonderful human being and I'm glad he made it," Bellarmino Rodriguez Beyz, owner of Alvarenga's boat, told CNN.
He said the boat was equipped with a GPS system and radio communication, but both systems got wet and stopped working when a storm hit.
"When they told me that a boat had appeared with somebody on board I had no doubts," Rodriguez said. "I recognized Alvarenga immediately when I saw his picture. It couldn't be anyone else. The boat and the registration number check."
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/04/world/asia/marshall-islands-castaway/
http://static.euronews.com/articles/255374/606x341_0401-castaway-returns.jpg
If Alvarenga's story proves true, the trip across the Pacific would have taken him across roughly 6,600 miles (10,800 kilometers) of open ocean before ending in the Marshall Islands, about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, in the northern Pacific.
Officials in the islands say they have no reason to doubt what he has told them so far, the Mexican ambassador said.
Such an amazing journey isn't unheard of in the small Pacific nation, as three Mexican fishermen made a similar drift voyage in 2006 that lasted nine months. Those men lived off fish they caught and rainwater, and they read the Bible for comfort.
Conditions in the Pacific make the timeline of Alvarenga's journey plausible, said Judson Jones, a producer for CNN Weather.
Jones said that given the average currents between Mexico and the Marshall Islands, it would have taken less than a year to travel from the origin to the end in the strongest average currents. If the trip did indeed take 13-1/2 months, it means his boat would have averaged about 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) a day. But Jones said a meandering journey in and out of the currents was most likely.
http://tribfox40.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/s030567981.jpg
http://www.independent.co.uk/migration_catalog/article5242071.ece/BINARY/original/13newsci.jpg