MEXICO: Relatives of three fishermen who were lost in the Pacific Ocean for nine months rejoice at news of their rescue

Three Mexican fishermen have been rescued after drifting for months and thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean in a small boat, an ordeal they survived by eating raw birds and fish and drinking rain water. The shark fishermen said on Wednesday (August 16) they left their home village of San Blas on Mexico's Pacific coast in November and were blown 5,000 miles (8,000 km) off course after their 25-foot (8-metre) fiberglass boat ran out of gas and they were left to the mercy of the winds and the tides. Their families had given them up for dead, but they found a way to survive in what appeared to be one of the most impressive feats of endurance on the high seas. "We ate raw fish, ducks, sea gulls. We took down any bird that landed on our boat and we ate it like that, raw," Jesus Vidana, one of the three survivors, said in a Mexican radio interview from the ship that rescued them. The news stunned friends and relatives who had given them up for dead. "I have been very depressed and today my grandson lives and I am very happy and maybe soon he will arrive home," said Fancisca Perez, the grandmother of one of the rescued men, Lucio Rendon. Vidana and his two friends - identified as Salvador Ordonez and Lucio Rendon - were found sunburned but otherwise in relatively good shape. The men said they never left hope that they would be rescued, but were lucky to be picked up in the end because they were fast asleep when first spotted and only noticed the rescue boat was coming for them when they heard its engine. "They were very skinny and very hungry," Eugene Muller, manager of the fishing firm that found them, said on Wednesday. Many of their loved ones found the news hard to believe. "There are no words (to express it), because the emotion here is so strong because we thought he was dead," said Efrain Partida, a friend of Rendon. Mexican Navy Official Juan Manuel Gonzalez said the currents in the ocean would have carried the men to the west, crossing south of Hawaii and heading for the north east coast of Australia. Mexico's government is sending an official to meet the survivors in the Marshall Islands when the trawler that picked them up returns to port in a couple of weeks. The government will then help them return home. Among other recorded cases of people surviving long periods stranded at sea, in 1942 a Chinese sailor named Poon Lim survived four months alone in the South Atlantic after a German U-boat torpedoed the British merchant ship he was working on. In 1789, British Vice Adm. William Bligh was set adrift after the famous mutiny on "The Bounty," a navy ship he commanded. He and 18 loyal crew members then made an impressive six-week journey to safety in Timor.

ITN Source | August 17, 2006

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