Four survive 32 days adrift in the Pacific by eating coconuts
WELLINGTON: Four people survived a month adrift in the Pacific by eating coconuts and drinking rainwater in an ordeal that claimed the lives of eight of their companions, including a baby, reports said on Wednesday.
The group, from Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville province, are believed to have spent 32 days at sea. The Solomon Star News reported the group set off from Bougainville on December 22, intending to celebrate Christmas in the Carteret Islands, about
100 kilometres away.
But survivor Dominic Stally said their small boat capsized and a number of the group drowned. The rest managed to right the vessel but there were further fatalities as they floated in the remote waters at the mercy of powerful ocean currents.
“We could do nothing with their dead bodies, we just have to let go of them at sea,” he told the newspaper. “A couple have died and left behind their baby and I am the one who held onto the baby and later the baby died as well.”
Stally said a number of fishing vessels passed nearby without noticing them until they were finally picked up on January 23 off New Caledonia after drifting some 2,000 kilometres. The Star News said the survivors comprised two men, a woman and a girl aged about 12.
They were dropped off in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, last Saturday and were discharged into the care of Papua New Guinea’s High Commissioner John Balavu after receiving treatment for dehydration.