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Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

theguardian.com

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Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#31

Post by jzwinck »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #30
mojuba wrote: post #24

One of the absolutely necessary things you should have on board is solar panels, to keep your radio alive. Also, the movie All Is Lost comes to mind.

Or some other kind of backup radio or emergency signaling device; solar panels sound awfully expensive / fragile, instead you could have a self-contained wind-up system, bolted onto the ship somewhere secure.

Current practice on first-world vessels sometimes includes solar panels, but even better is an EPIRB [1]. Too expensive for third-world fishermen who anyway did not intend an ocean crossing. You don't need long-term power for it, because you only activate it once, it is more power efficient than talking on a radio, and it doesn't need to run for very long, because there is a high chance you will be rescued straight away.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon

Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#32

Post by DanielBMarkham »

mojuba wrote: post #23
akshatpradhan wrote: post #20

How would you find others still out there living in similar precarious situations?

Some sort of automatic scanners on all cargo and cruise ships.

A most interesting idea.

I've read several of these "survival at sea" stories and one thing they all have in common is the fact that they end up passing many container ships before they are rescued. Certainly some kind of automated scanning would save lives.

Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#33

Post by JackFr »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #28
qume wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birds and turtles are curious about drifting things, like boats. And both are easy to catch (well, relatively). I haven't caught fish with my hands but at sea been in situations where it didn't seem impossible. And the fishermen I know in the area (I live there on a boat) are magicians. So sure, everything needs testing but I have a bit of a frame of reference around this one and it raises no red flags for me at all.…

I once put my hand around an urban squirrel's tail. Could have held it if I'd squeezed a bit. It was sitting on a wall munching some garbage, and I just walked straight up to it. Have you ever seen a squirrel do a double-take? I guess my point is that even slippery little animals aren't as uncatchable as one would expect, if you can take them by surprise.

That seems like step one of a plan to get rabies.

Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#34

Post by mkl »

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #16

I find it incredible that their drifting sent them in the same general direction that Thor Heyerdahl [0] suspected (and verified in the Kon-Tiki expedition) that one would go without any extra power of their own. The fact that a man who didn't even plan for the trip (or have any provisions) made it out alive even though he was virtually alone for the entire trip (his partner died after 2 months) leads me to believe t…

You have it backwards. Polynesians travelled to South America and back, acquiring sweet potatoes there, possibly some human DNA, and leaving chickens (there is good evidence for each of these, but it's not undeniable). There is a huge amount of evidence of Polynesians travelling long distances by sea, and, as far as I can see, essentially no evidence for South Americans doing this. The fact that it was theoretically possible does not mean it happened.

Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#35

Post by jonnathanson »

phy6 wrote: post #15
werdnapk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned in the article, he tossed almost everything overboard to make the boat more stable in the waves.

Hooks and line have got to be the worst choices to throw overboard. I can't imagine it made much of a weight difference on a boat as long as two trucks. But then again he also smashed the engine when he got mad, so maybe it was just one in a series of poor choices.

The article doesn't make clear what sort of hooks and line these were. It's likely to have been a big, heavy, motorized rig from which the line and hooks couldn't be neatly separated, especially while frantically aligning the boat and bailing water in a freak storm.

We should also bear in mind that, at that moment, Alvarenga wasn't anticipating a year at sea. In fact, he was acting to prevent that fate. He believed that his first priority was the right the ship at any cost, because the alternative was capsizing or going adrift. From there, he'd planned to make it back to shore or be rescued in relatively short order.

It's too easy to critique his choices retrospectively. Some of them look bad on paper, out of context. But I've never been placed into that sort of context.

As a general rule, your first priority in any emergency at sea is to stay afloat. This directive overrules all others until you believe your vessel is stable and secure.

Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#36

Post by madaxe_again »

jychang wrote: post #29
bootload wrote: post #6

"They ate fish after fish. Alvarenga stuffed raw meat and dried meat into his mouth, hardly noticing or caring about the difference." Fine detail born out of other survivors of long sea voyages, when eating fish don't skip they "eyes" . "Another unlikely luxury are fish eyes, which are a useful source of liquid and of another vital nutrient. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a British couple who survived 117 days on a rubb…

Interesting how cultural perspectives differ on this. As a Chinese American, I wouldn't think twice about eating the eyes of a fish. They're tasty!

Yup, a bit like caviar in texture and taste, I find, but sweeter.

Sheep eyes, on the other hand, are disturbing as they balefully glare at you from your bowl of soup.

Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#37

Post by madaxe_again »

oska wrote: post #9

> Although he didn’t know it, Alvarenga had washed ashore on Tile Islet, a small island that is part of the Ebon Atoll, on the southern tip of the 1,156 islands that make up the Republic of the Marshall Islands, one of the most remote spots on Earth. As it took me a little while to find Tile Islet, here's the link on google maps for others' convenience: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@4.6210188,168.7678056,15z

He got very lucky - as not only was bumping into the Marshalls remarkable, but he didn't end up on Eniwetok/Enewetak or one of the other nuked atolls, where only radiation sickness would have greeted him.

Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#38

Post by Retric »

madaxe_again wrote: post #37
oska wrote: post #9

> Although he didn’t know it, Alvarenga had washed ashore on Tile Islet, a small island that is part of the Ebon Atoll, on the southern tip of the 1,156 islands that make up the Republic of the Marshall Islands, one of the most remote spots on Earth. As it took me a little while to find Tile Islet, here's the link on google maps for others' convenience: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@4.6210188,168.7678056,15z

He got very lucky - as not only was bumping into the Marshalls remarkable, but he didn't end up on Eniwetok/Enewetak or one of the other nuked atolls, where only radiation sickness would have greeted him.

It's been long enough that the most radioactive stuff is gone, the US military also did extensive cleanup 30 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enewetak_Atoll#/media/File:Run...

"The final cost of the cleanup project was $239 million."

Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#39

Post by ghshephard »

Magi604 wrote: post #7

I am curious as to how he caught these turtles and birds in the open sea while in his no doubt famished shape. "shoved his arms into the water up to his shoulders . . . When a fish swam between his hands, he smashed them shut" Seriously, this needs some mythbusters-style testing.

Tickling trout is illegal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trout_tickling) - so presumably it's not that difficult.

Re: Lost at sea: a man who vanished for 14 months

#40

Post by ghshephard »

JackFr wrote: post #33
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once put my hand around an urban squirrel's tail. Could have held it if I'd squeezed a bit. It was sitting on a wall munching some garbage, and I just walked straight up to it. Have you ever seen a squirrel do a double-take? I guess my point is that even slippery little animals aren't as uncatchable as one would expect, if you can take them by surprise.

That seems like step one of a plan to get rabies.

According to the CDC, squirrels are almost never a source of rabies. http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/pets/ - that is, unless they are acting in an unusual manner, such as letting people walk up to them and grab them....
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