This is what we call a miracle, as sometimes happens on the open sea. Monday October 14, 2024, a catamaran missing for more than two months was located by fishermen, in the Sea of Okhotsk, near a village in the Kamchatka region in the Russian Far East.
On board, a man still alive. In the images released by the regional prosecutor’s office, we see a bearded man in an orange life jacket, in the middle of the night, wrapping himself in a blanket on a small boat, waiting for rescuers to approach.
His two companions in misfortune are dead
According to initial information communicated by the regional prosecutor’s office, “two men and a 15-year-old teenager, the son of one of them, left on a Baïkat 470 catamaran-type boat” heading from the Khabarovsk region on the island of Sakhalin on August 9. Contact with the boat, 4.70 m long and 2.20 m wide, was quickly lost.
Two occupants of the boat died during the drift, in circumstances which have not been communicated, and the man who was able to be rescued received medical assistance.
According to the Russian agency Ria Novostithe survivor’s name is Mikhail Pichoguine and it is his brother, Sergei, 49 years old, and his nephew Ilia, 15 years old, who died. The bodies were still in the boat when the fishing boat Ange rose to his height.
The survivor would have lost 50 kg
“The survivor is in a serious condition, emaciated, but conscious”Alexei Arykov, the captain of the fishing boat that saved him, told Ria Novosti.
“It’s kind of a miracle”for her part, commented to the same media the wife of the survivor, Ekaterina, believing that her husband’s excess weight could have saved him.
“He weighed around 100 kg”she said, while Russian television claims that the man now weighs 50 kg.
The trio wanted to see whales
Mikhail Pichugin worked as a driver on the island of Sakhalin and invited his brother and nephew to visit him, reports the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravdaciting family members that the trio had planned a sea excursion to see whales.
An investigation was opened for violation of maritime transport operating rules which recklessly led to the death of two people, adds the regional prosecutor’s office.
Precedents on other oceans around the world
In 2017, two American women drifted at sea for five months in the Pacific with their dogs. Fortunately for them, they had provisions for six months.
At the end of 2021, a seasoned Breton sailor had drifted for three weeks in the Atlantic Ocean while at the beginning of 2023, a Dominican saved himself from the ketchup on board his sailboat, lost in the Caribbean for 24 days.
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