A sailor who fell overboard from a supply ship in the Pacific at 4 a.m. spent more than 14 hours holding onto an old fishing buoy before being rescued.
Alone in the middle of the ocean, and without a life jacket, at dawn he chose to swim to a black dot on the horizon, a decision that would ultimately save his life.
Vidam Perevertilov, the chief engineer on board the Silver Supporter, was towed back on deck for almost a full day after falling overboard on February 16 when his freighter was carrying out a supply flight between New Zealand’s Tauranga port on the country’s North Island and the isolated British territory of Pitcairn.
He later told his son that he felt dizzy after a night shift in the engine room and that he had walked onto the deck to recover before falling.
He doesn’t remember falling overboard. He may have passed out, ”Perevetilov’s son Marat told New Zealand’s Stuff.
Perevetilov remembers regaining consciousness when he saw his ship sail into darkness. The crew did not notice that he was missing for six hours.
The ship issued a distress call and French naval aircraft joined the search from Polynesia, while the French Meteorological Service examined winds and currents to determine possible drift patterns.
The crew on board was able to determine that Perevertilov was on board at 4 a.m. because he had submitted a log report at that time. At the time of going overboard, the Silver Supporter was about 400 nautical miles south of the southernmost Australian islands of French Polynesia.
In the middle of the ocean, with his ship out of sight on the horizon, 52-year-old Perevertilov made a decision at dawn that would ultimately save his life.
He saw a black spot on the horizon and swam towards it, unsure what it was.
“His will to survive was strong, but he told me that until the sun came up, he was struggling to survive,” Marat told Stuff. from Lithuania.
The dot on the horizon turned out to be an abandoned fishing buoy. Perevertilov clung to it until he was found around 6:00 pm. His ship was in a fixed search pattern when a crew member heard a faint voice and a lookout saw a hand raise from the ocean.
Perevertilov was exhausted but pulled out of the water unharmed.
Vidam Perevertilov fell overboard about 400 nautical miles south of the Austral Islands. He was rescued after 14 hours and clung to an old fishing buoy.
British High Commissioner for New Zealand Laura Clarke, who also serves as Governor of Pitcairn Island, told the New Zealand Herald that everyone was “greatly relieved” to learn of the rescue.
“We all feared the worst given the sheer size of the Pacific Ocean and its strong currents,” she said.
“So the fact that the Silver Supporter found him, and he survived, is simply astonishing: a survival story that even Captain Bligh … would have applauded.”
William Bligh was adrift by mutineers on his ship the Bounty 1789 and successfully navigated more than 6,000 km in open launch to the island of Timor, then called the Dutch East Indies.
The mutineers would become the first inhabitants of Pitcairn Island, and their descendants still live there. The remote volcanic island remains British territory.
Perevetilov’s son Marat, Stuff said, had left his father the fish buoy in the sea instead of taking it as a souvenir.
“It’s funny. He said he wanted to leave it there so it could save someone else’s life.”