SAILOR SAVED 14 HOURS AFTER FALLING OVERBOARD
‘PIECE OF SEA RUBBISH’ SAVES SAILOR RESCUED AFTER 14 HOURS
A SAILOR who fell overboard was saved when he swam towards a ‘black dot’ on the horizon – and found an old fishing buoy bobbing in the ocean.
Vidam Perevertilov, 52, who had already been treading water for two hours, spent the next 12 hours clinging to the float in the South Pacific – until his ship returned and rescued him.
The chief engineer had been pumping fuel in the engine room of supply ship Silver Supporter as it sailed from New Zealand to remote Pitcairn Island, and was not wearing a life jacket.
‘After finishing his shift, he started to feel hot and dizzy, so he went on deck to recover,’ son Marat said.
‘He doesn’t remember falling overboard. He may have fainted.
‘His will to survive was strong but he told me until the sun came up he was struggling to stay afloat.
‘He could see a black dot in the horizon several kilometres away and started swimming towards it.
‘It wasn’t anchored to anything or a boat. It was just a piece of sea rubbish.’
Silver Supporter had sailed on for six hours before Vidam was reported missing. The captain raised a distress signal and turned the ship around.
Work logs showed the Lithuanian had disappeared at around 4am, when the ship had been 400 nautical miles south of the Austral Islands in French Polynesia. France’s meteorological service studied wind speeds and directions to calculate how far he might have drifted, while French navy planes swept the area and other ships began searching, too. Six hours later, a second miracle ended his ordeal.
‘One of the passengers on Silver Supporter heard a weak, human shout on the starboard side,’ said Marat. ‘ They came alongside, lowered a ladder and a crewman pulled him on board.’
Badly sunburned Vidam ‘looked about 20 years older and very tired but he was alive’, his son added. ‘ He always kept himself fit and healthy, and that’s why I think he could survive.’
Vidam is still at sea but talked to Marat by video call and email. ‘He talks about God a lot in messages now. He wasn’t very religious before,’ Marat said.
Surprisingly, Vidam didn’t bring the buoy on board as a souvenir. ‘He wanted to leave it there,’ his son explained, ‘so it could save another person’s life.’