A Lithuanian sailor who fell overboard from his boat survived 14 hours adrift in the South Pacific clinging to a piece of floating garbage until he was rescued, his son said.
Vidan Perevertilov, who was not wearing a life jacket when he rushed overboard, resisted swimming for hours until he was headed for a black point Spotted miles away and it turned out to be a floating buoy, “a piece of garbage,” in the words of his son to the news portal Stuff New Zealand News.
The castaway is the engineer of the ship Silver Supporter, which was sailing between New Zealand and the Pitcairn Islands, a British territory in the South Pacific, when he became dizzy in the engine room at dawn, went on deck to take up the sky and fell into the sea, probably due to a blackout, without the rest of the crew noticing until six hours later.
The captain gave the order to turn when he noticed his absence and the crew were able to calculate his position when checking in the nautical register approximate that he was still on board at four in the morning.
After several hours of searching, involving French ships departing from nearby Tahiti, the crew located and rescued him.
“He looked like 20 years older and was very tired, but he was still alive,” his son, Marat, told the news portal.