I haven’t read all of the answers, but I assume someone has already mentioned this. Either way it’s an incredible story so here goes.
On November 12th, 2012, 36 year old Jose Alvarenga left the shore of Costa Azul on a routine fishing trip. Alvarenga himself was an experienced fisherman, but his new partner was not.
The trip was only supposed to last a little over a day at sea. Soon after embarking on this voyage however, they went off course due to bad weather that lasted approximately five days.
During this time, the single motor along with the rest of the electronics had been damaged, leaving them adrift at sea. They had actually managed to catch over a thousand pounds of fish, but were forced to dump all of it to be able to steer the ship.
The two had managed to contact the owner of the fishing company via a two way radio. The owner organized a search party, but to no avail. No trace of the boat or the occupants could be found. The two were truly lost.
With all of the fishing gear lost to the storm, the pair had to resort to other means of survival. They managed to catch fish and turtles by hand, and collected rain water to drink. As you can imagine, this was not very practical.
Around four months into the journey, Alvarenga’s partner, Cordoba, began to lose all hope and died of starvation. Cordoba apparently knew he was going to die, and made Alvarenga promise that he wouldn’t eat his corpse. After Cordoba’s death, Alvarenga threw the corpse overboard fearing he would go insane.
Alvarenga said that throughout his voyage he passed by many cargo ships, but their wasn’t anything he could do to call for help. Eventually, he came upon what must have been a glorious sight, land. He then made a difficult decision.
He jumped from the relative safety of his boat, and swam ashore. All in all his trip had lasted 438 days, travelling over 10,000 kilometers.
Although he was not technically in a “raft”, a small boat like that without a working motor may as well have been.
Thanks for reading!
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