True Life Story

An American fisherman is in complete fear as he has no words to tell his friend`s mother what had happened to her son who died on a boat trip that took him 438 days to return.

Salvador had survived his journey after being rescued and he is on his way home to El Salvador, where he is to finally reunite with his family and of course face Ezequiel Cordoba’s mother.

A 36-year-old Salvador from America`s small town of El Salvador had scheduled to embark on fishing trip with his friend but unfortunately, something went wrong with his friend so he took a 22-year-old Ezaquiel Cordoba.

The two had never spoken before or worked on a fishing task but they agreed on this day since they all had fishing ambitions.

Their boat was fully loaded with necessary items like, gallons of fuel, gallons of drinking water, knives, buckets and etc.

They first started out all good but Cordoba started getting nervous 2 days later on the sea when the waves. He had signed on to make $50 and had often worked 12 hour days without complaints.

The waves grew big and the matter got even worse when their motor had stopped working.

Salvador called his boss on the radio, warning him that the motor had stopped working and that they were now miles out at sea. But there was no response. Even worse was the fact that the GPS they had brought with them had stopped working. They called for the coast guard, who told them to anchor so they could come and rescue them. Unfortunately, the boat wasn’t equipped with an anchor and the two drifted further out to sea.

Hours of the ship being tossed up and down and the two men slipping and sliding across the deck had taken their toll. But as the sun sank past the horizon and the storm raged on, the cold began to become unbearable. The two huddled together under their refrigerator-sized icebox hoping to insulate themselves but took turns bailing water out of the boat.

By the next day, the boat had become filled with water and the two had to find means to unload the water.

After unloading as much water as they possibly could, the experienced sailor and his first mate took stock of all the things they still had to worry about. The 25-foot boat was only about as wide as a pickup truck and had no raised structure, no glass, and no running lights, and so it was nearly invisible at sea. The biggest problem, as it turned out, was the fish they had come to collect.

The amount fish that they caught weighed more than enough to have capsized the boat so they had to dump it to avoid any dangers.

It was a process that would take them weeks.

As the days passby, hunger and thirst began to take hold of the two men. They now had no food, no means to catch fish, and no way to collect fresh water. To fix at least half of this problem, they took to trying to catch turtles, jellyfish, and seabirds in order to have something to eat. Finally, 14 days into their journey, it started to rain.

It’s now two on the sea and Salvador has adapted to eating sea animals available while Cordoba`s health can’t handle see foods.

His own depression and fear is killing him.

Salvador told his dying friend that if he died, he’d go back home to his home to tell his devout mother that he regretted not being able to say goodbye to her.

Not long after that fateful conversation, Ezequiel Cordoba succumbed to malnutrition and exposure and died. Salvador screamed at his friend, “Don’t leave me alone! You have to fight for life! What am I going to do here alone?”

At first, Salvador just pretended that his friend hadn’t died. For days after, he propped Cordoba up and spoke to him, but six days later, he finally accepted the truth. He stripped off his friend’s clothes, washed his body, and dropped him overboard. Now he was truly alone.

One day, after a particularly nasty storm, Salvador found himself whizzing along on a smooth current. The sky was suddenly filled with shorebirds. Salvador knew that he was headed for land at last. He must have been close. There, in the distance was a green Pacific atoll. It looked small and wild, but it was dry land and would likely have food and shelter.

After crawling naked onto the beach, he laid on the sand for a while, absorbing the reality of the situation. He was thin beyond recognition and weaker than he’d ever been. The island, as it turned out, he was on Tile Islet, a small island that was part of the Ebon Atoll. What’s more, the island had people on it.

The skinny fisherman stumbled his way through the undergrowth until he reached a small canal across from what appeared to be a beach house.

This was the home Emi Libokmeto and her husband, Russel Laikidrik. They rushed out to him and welcomed them into their home. He managed to draw a boat and ask for a doctor before passing out.

But what would his explanation be to the mother of Cordoba who died on the sea whilst in his hands??