There was a layer of kitchen oil and some chewed gum. Beneath that there were soggy carrots, half a head of cabbage and almost a litre of half-rancid milk.
The phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” has never been more appropriate. Alvarenga, lost, starving and dwarfed by the big blue sea around him, savoured the discovery. It was one of many small miracles that helped the then-36-year-old survive 14 months of otherwise hopeless floating at the whim of the Pacific Ocean’s powerful currents.
When by sheer chance the fisherman washed up 6700km from the coast where his journey began, he was tired, could barely walk, had tiny wrists and had grown matted hair and a thick long beard.
He wasn’t speaking much then and couldn’t look people in the eyes. But he’s telling his story now and it’s remarkable.
Journalist and author Jonathan Franklin has written about Alvarenga’s miracle journey in a crippled boat with only the corpse of his friend for company.
Through exclusive interviews with the native of El Salvador, Franklin tells the story that has, until now, never been told in its entirety.
The Guardianpublished an extract from Franklin’s new book 438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea this week. It starts on that first day, November 17, 2012, and doesn’t end until a month into the new year in 2014.
Alvarenga set off on a shark fishing expedition in a fibreglass boat. Two days into the trip, 75km off the coast of Mexico, he and his crewmate Ezequiel Cordoba were hit by a large storm and left stranded. Without lights and with no raised structure, the boat was “virtually invisible at sea”, Franklin wrote.
On board the pair had a crate the size of a small fridge full of fish — tuna, mahimahi and shark — as well as 60 litres of water. They had a boatload of fishing gear, too.
After months at sea, Cordoba began to deteriorate. What happened next is proof that Alvarenga was losing his mind. As Franklin tells it, Cordoba began groaning one night.
“‘I am tired, I want water,” he said. His breath was rough. Alvarenga retrieved the water bottle and put it to Cordoba’s mouth, but he did not swallow. Instead he stretched out. His body shook in short convulsions. He groaned and his body tensed up. Alvarenga suddenly panicked. He screamed into Cordoba’s face, “Don’t leave me alone! You have to fight for life! What am I going to do here alone? Cordoba didn’t reply. Moments later he died with his eyes open.”
Alvarenga told Franklin he cried for hours and later began a conversation with his corpse.
“How do you feel? How was your sleep?” he asked his dead crewmate.
“I slept good, and you? Have you had breakfast?” Alvarenga answered his own questions aloud.
Six days later, still talking to the corpse, he woke to the reality.
“First I washed his feet. His clothes were useful, so I stripped off a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt. I put that on — it was red, with little skull-and-crossbones — and then I dumped him in. And as I slid him into the water, I fainted.”
For 15 lunar cycles (yes, Alvarenga kept count), he drifted alone. He had no idea where he was. He told Franklin that to pass the time he dreamt up wild scenarios in such depth that it were as if he was living them out.
“I would stroll back and forth on the boat and imagine that I was wandering the world. By doing this I could make myself believe that I was actually doing something. Not just sitting there, thinking about dying.”
He prayed, too. Those prayers were answered in the form of shore birds circling in their hundreds. Out of nowhere and by sheer chance the stranded fisherman’s boat washed up on a tiny Pacific atoll.
“I was totally destroyed and as skinny as a board,” he said. “The only thing left was my intestines and gut, plus skin and bones. My arms had no meat. My thighs were skinny and ugly,” Alvarenga said.
He had washed up on Tile Islet in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. It’s one of the world’s most remote locations, half way between Alaska and Australia.
The survival story is hard to believe, so hard in fact that many have questioned the authenticity of the fisherman’s accounts. Reunited with his family, Alvarenga has no reason to lie. He, like so many who survived being lost at sea, is simply grateful to be back on dry land.
I suffered hunger, thirst and an extreme loneliness, and it didn’t take my life,” Alvarenga says. “You only get one chance to live so appreciate it.”
Louis Jordan knows what it’s like to be lost at sea. In January this year he had his “Jose Alvarenga moment” after sailing from South Carolina.
Looking for a place to fish, his boat capsized in bad weather and its mast broke. For 66 days he survived catching fish with his laundry and collecting water in a bucket.
He was spotted more than 260km from the coast by a German-flagged container ship and its alert crew. When he was reunited with his parents they told him: “We thought we lost you”.
Years before both Jordan and Alvarenga became lost, another crew of Mexican fisherman proved survival at sea for prolonged periods was possible.
Jesus Vidana Lopez, 27, Salvador Ordonez, 37, and Lucio Rendon, 27, set out from San Blas in Mexico in October, 2005, before they ran out of fuel. It would be 10 months before they were rescued.
In a 30-foot vessel the trio drifted for 8000km, surviving on raw fish and seabirds and each other’s company. Ordonez was nicknamed “El Gato” or “the Cat” for his bird-catching skills. There were a fourth and fifth member of the crew but two of the men died and their bodies were dumped at sea.
During the journey the men came close to being rescued a number of times. They waved frantically at passing ships but none stopped. Two weeks before they too would’ve passed the Marshall Islands the three men were picked up by a Taiwanese trawler.
In 2012 Adrian Vasquez and two friends left San Carlos, Panama, on a small boat. Their engine died and they too were forced to make do with what little the ocean offered. Like Alvarenga and Ordonez, Vasquez lost his friends at sea.
The 18-year-old spent 26 days adrift before he was spotted north of the Galápagos Islands, 1000km from where he started.
Perhaps the most improbable story of survival at sea comes from Japan following the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
At sea, 14km from the coast, Hiromitsu Shinkawa, was found floating without food or water. The other thing he didn’t have was a boat. Instead, Shinkawa was atop a piece of his home’s roof.
I was saved by holding onto the roof,” the 60-year-old said, according to Kyodo News Agency. “But my wife was swept away.”
He said he burst into tears when he saw his rescuers.
“I thought today was the last day of my life.”
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