‘I want to go home,’ says Pacific island castaway
Print Edition
A MEXICAN castaway who says he survived more than a year drifting at sea pleaded yesterday to be taken home as he was picked up from the remote Pacific island where he had washed ashore.
“I want to get back to Mexico,” the castaway, who identified himself as Jose Ivan, told interpreter Magui Vaca via radio as he was about to board a Marshall Islands patrol vessel to be taken from Ebon Atoll to the capital Majuro for a medical examination.
“I feel bad,” he told Vaca of his physical and mental state. “I am so far away. I don’t know where I am or what happened.”
An emaciated Ivan was found last Thursday clad only in ragged underpants, when his 7.3-meter fiberglass boat with propellerless engines floated on to the reef at Ebon Atoll in the Marshalls.
He managed to communicate to his rescuers that he had drifted across a 12,500 kilometer expanse of Pacific Ocean north of the equator between southern Mexico and the Marshall Islands.
Ivan told Vaca he left his home in Mexico to go shark fishing on December 24, 2012, putting his time at sea at 13 months, not the 16 months his rescuers initially believed.
“It’s been difficult trying to communicate with him,” said Ebon Mayor Ione deBrum who had been communicating with the Mexican by drawing pictures.
No details have emerged as to why he began drifting, or what happened to a companion he said had died a few months ago.
When discovered, Ivan had a long beard and was unable to walk without assistance.
He indicated that he survived by eating turtles, birds and fish and drinking turtle blood when there was no rain.
Ivan is expected to arrive in Majuro today.
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