A California man was rescued alive drifting in his sailboat off Hawaii after spending ۳۰ days stranded at sea.
Kai Sato, ۳۹, set sail from California’s Catalina Islands on ۷ June hoping to complete his first solo sail across the Pacific Ocean, he told Hawaii News Now. But his journeytook a disastrous turn when his mast snapped, and the phone he was using for navigation died.
“I cried for a whole week, just drifting south, like miserable,” Sato said. “I felt like I was going to just try to turn my motor on and just suffocate, to kill myself, I felt hopeless.”
Sato said he initially tried to motor back to shore, but ran out of gas. “I was literally like a sitting duck, just getting taken south by the current going way off course,” he added.
After several days, Sato said that he began jerry-rigging the sails and used PVC pipes and kayak paddles to try to repair his boat. After about ۲۰ days adrift, he said he ran out of drinking water, and began using a plastic bag to create condensation that he could drink.
“I was just licking that to survive” he said, adding that he ate mainly oatmeal and fish and squid that landed on his boat.
Sato said that it took him a month to reach the shipping lane between California and Hawaii, where on Tuesday, his boat was spotted and he was rescued by a crew on a passing containership.
The Seafarers International Union issued a statement last week, in which they said that on ۲۱ July, watch standers onboard the M/V George III spotted a small sailboat in distress.
“All hands were called to assist in the recovery of solo sailor Kaichi Sato aboard his de-masted ۳۲ft sailboat approximately ۹۰۰ miles from Hawaii,” they said.
The statement said that the crew then “helped prepare the engines for immediate maneuvering” and “rigged the ship’s pilot ladder and prepared life rings, messenger lines and life-throwing appliances to assist in the recovery of Sato”.
Once they were close enough to Sato’s boat, they said that they “shot the line-throwing device across to it” and that “Sato pulled the attached messenger line and made fast to his boat’s stern”.
The seafarers then pulled the sailboat’s “stern to the pilot ladder, and Sato was able to step off and climb aboard the George III”.
The statement said that in all, the rescue took around an hour and a half, and the union said that Sato “expressed his thanks and gratitude to the entire crew of the George III for saving his life”.
According to Hawaii News Now, Sato is now staying with a relative, and is already planning another sail, this time to the Philippines in a larger boat.
