How a California Man Survived 30 Days Lost at Sea With a Broken Mast
· Vice
A guy on a sailboat making the journey from California to Hawaii survived a month lost at sea after his mast snapped, stranding him in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
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As reported by Hawaii News Now, thirty-nine-year-old Kai Sato left California in June hoping to complete his first solo trek across the Pacific. Two weeks in, his mast snapped, his navigation phone died, and he suddenly had to face the realization that the Pacific Ocean is gigantic.
There was one shred of hope: his sailboat had a motor on it, but he ran out of fuel on the way back to California, leaving him stranded at sea yet again.
After feeling helpless for the first week, contemplating suicide so he didn’t have to die alone of dehydration baking under the hot summer sun, his survival instincts kicked in and he started building himself a makeshift sailing rig out of PVC pipe and kayak paddles.
Being Lost at Sea for a Month Didn’t Damper His Love for Sailing
As for food, shockingly, that wasn’t much of an issue as he was prepared for a long journey anyway. He had tons of oatmeal, and fish and squid were practically leaping into the boat. He did have one major problem: water. As the famous line from the 1798 poem The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner goes, “water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” After his supply ran dry, Sato started collecting condensation from seawater using plastic bags stretched over buckets. He survived by licking the tiny droplets that formed
Sato drifted for a month before he floated into a busy shipping lane about 900 miles away from Hawaii. Larger shipping vessels generally have specific crew members assigned to monitor the health of the vessel and the operational environment, along with the waters surrounding the ship. These are called Watchstanders. A Watchstander aboard the container ship George III spotted the disabled 32-foot sailboat, and the crew spent around 90 minutes carefully bringing Sato aboard. They gave him food, water, clean clothes, and a room
Things went bad for Sato, but he seems to know what he’s doing. Just ran into some unfortunate luck. That’s probably why he’s already planning another trip across the ocean, this time to the Philippines and in an even bigger boat.
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