Four survive a month adrift in Pacific after capsizing

Eight other passengers on stricken vessel either drowned or died before it was spotted by fishing boat

FOUR people survived 32 days adrift on a boat in the Pacific by eating coconuts floating in the ocean and drinking rainwater in an extraordinary ordeal that claimed the lives of eight other passengers including a baby, a local newspaper has reported.

The group, from Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville province, set off on Dec 22, with the intention of spending Christmas in the Carteret Islands, about 60 miles away.

However, their small boat capsized and several members of the group drowned, the only survivor with “the strength and energy to talk” told the Solomon Star News.

The rest managed to right the vessel and clamber back on board, but more died as they lay adrift far from land and pulled by powerful ocean currents.

“We could do nothing with their dead bodies; we just had to let go of them at sea,” survivor Dominic Stally said. “A couple died and left behind their baby and I am the one who held on to the baby and later the baby died as well. I am really sorry, but there is nothing more I could do.”

The stricken group were given false hope when several fishing boats passed nearby but failed to notice them as they had no flares to raise the alarm.

A fishing vessel finally spotted them on Jan 23 off New Caledonia. They had drifted more than 1,200 miles.

The survivors comprised two men, a woman and a girl aged about 12.

After a week on the fishing boat, they were dropped off in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, last Saturday, where they received treatment for dehydration.

The Pacific has been the scene of a string of remarkable tales of survival.

In January 2014 Salvadoran fisherman Jose Alvarenga washed up in the

Marshall Islands, more than 13 months after he set off from Mexico’s west coast with a companion, who died.

During more than a year at sea, he covered 5,000 miles in a fibreglass boat and survived by catching fish, birds and turtles with his bare hands and drinking rainwater, the turtles’ blood and his own urine.

His incredible story was initially greeted with scepticism, but he passed a lie detector test and an examination of ocean currents and boating records backed his claim. However, in 2015 he denied claims in a lawsuit filed by the family of his companion that he committed cannibalism by eating his crew mate to stay alive.

An Indonesian teenager survived seven weeks at sea in 2018 after his tiny fishing trap lost its moorings and ended up some 1,500 miles away off Guam.

In 2001, Lapahele Sopi and Telea Paa from Samoa survived four months adrift at sea in a small metal boat. The pair were rescued in Papua New Guinea – 2,500 miles from their homes.