Fishermen rescued after a month adrift at sea
Yachting and Boating World: Four men spent 30 days at sea and travelled 2,000km before being spotted by a routine surveillance night flight.
On Saturday (31 October) the Mexican navy came to the rescue of four fishermen who had been lost at sea in a small fishing boat for more than four weeks.
A patrol plane spotted the group Friday night, adrift off southern Mexico’s Pacific Coast some 160 miles from Chiapas, and a navy ship was dispatched to rescue the men – two Ecuadorians and two Colombians.
The fishermen had set out from a port in northwestern Ecuador in late September and had drifted more than 2,000 kilometres north over the weeks they spent at sea.
A statement from the Mexican navy said: “The castaways said they launched from the port of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, on September 24 and got lost at sea while fishing. They ran out of fuel on October 1 as they tried to return to port, then got swept north by the current.”
Pictures posted on the Secretary of the Navy’s (SEMAR) Facebook page show the stranded men aboard their small blue single-outboard engine vessel called the Pregon.
Authorities said the men were badly dehydrated but reported no other health problems.
