Curiositystream.com/reallifelore. The Pacific Ocean is

mind-bogglingly big if you started here off the coast of northern Chile and dug a hole straight through the earth and came out on the

other side you discover that you'd still be in the Pacific Ocean in the South China Sea the Pacific covers about

One-third of Earth's entire surface and it's bigger than all of the land on earth combined

Except for a few scattered islands. That's also mostly empty which means that if you're ever unfortunate enough to get lost here

There's a very good chance that nobody will ever find you which makes the story of Jose

Salvador Alvarenga and his rescue all the more fascinating

He currently holds a world record that he achieved on

Accident and that probably nobody wants to beat the longest time spent being lost at sea against all odds

He somehow survived being lost for

438 days in the Pacific so his record probably won't be beaten anytime soon

But how did he do it the answers lie in how his misadventure began in 2012?

Alvarenga was an experienced fisherman in Mexico on November 17th

He and another guy named Ezekiel

Cordoba departed together on their small fishing boat from the tiny fishing village of Costa Azul on the Mexican Pacific coast

They planned to only work for a 30 hour fishing shift

so their boat was pretty small and not at all equipped for the

Nightmare that would come it was basically a canoe with no roof or cabin was only seven meters long and only had one

small motor and a refrigerator for storing their fish

they knew that a storm was coming near the area but

Fishermen in these parts of Mexico can earn enough money in a day to support themselves for an entire week

So they decided to take their chances and traveled 120 kilometers away from the coast to work at 1:00 a.m

The storm hit them and was threatening to sink their boats in a panic that the two men cut their fishing lines and dropped everything

They catch and most of their gear overboard to make themselves more maneuverable. They were 6 hours away from the coast

So they traveled through the storm and the night in a desperate attempt to get back by 7:00 a.m

There were only 24 kilometers away from the coast and could see mountains on the horizon

but then

Awful luck struck them and their motor died

Without any paddles oars or sails the unusually strong wind began pushing their boat back out towards the ocean

They're on board radio still thankfully worked

so they frantically reported their position to their boss who responded saying that he was coming but

their battery died and all they heard afterwards was

silence

imagine the frustration that they must have both felt in that moment as their radio died in all

Contact with the outside world with it and as they watched the mountains in the horizon that they were so close to slowly

Disappear as their boat that they were trapped on gradually was pushed back out into the vast abyss

Their boss did organize a search party to look for them for days

But as their boat drifted further out into the vastness of the Pacific it got harder and harder

So they eventually were forced to give up just five days later. The winds had already blown them

450 kilometers off the coast before finally settling down

They were surrounded by nothing but ocean in every direction and their boat was so small

They knew that they probably would never be spotted from the air

They had no flare gun or any other way to signal for help other than by waving so they knew that their chances of survival

Were going to be slim they had no supplies left on board

So they were forced to catch tiny fish or birds that landed on their boat with their bare hands for food

They grabbed plastic bottles that they found floating nearby them and used them to collect rainwater for drinking water

But during long periods of no rain

They were forced to mostly drink the blood of turtles that they caught with their hands or their own urine

imagine going day after day month after month in a tiny box with only one other person to talk to and the only other ways

to entertain yourselves being catching fish or napping

It's easy to understand how somebody could go insane under these conditions which according to Alvarenga story his friend

Did the other guy Cordoba gave up?

hope about four months into their isolation and became

Suicidal he got sick from all of the raw food that they were eating and refused to eat and eventually starve to death

Alvarenga was then all alone in the middle of nowhere with no other human in sight as far as the horizon could see a tiny

speck inside of the enormous Pacific and as you can see from this shipping map the Central Pacific where he was somewhere at is a

Very quiet part of the world ships rarely come through this area

But even still he claims to have encountered one when he was alone a cargo ship

Apparently passed right by him and four men on board spotted him and waved

But they just kept moving past him and never even bothered to stop

Imagine how frustrated he would have been again

If you were lost for months you were all alone and you finally spotted rescue

But they just ignored you and kept on moving 11 months in and Alvarenga had traveled about

8,000 kilometers across the ocean in his tiny little boat

His clothes were shredded and he only had a sweatshirt to protect himself against the Sun but finally on the 30th of January

2014 he spotted coconuts bobbing around his boat and Birds landing around him

He knew that land was near and after drifting some more he discovered an island that appeared to be uninhabited

it took him half a day just adrift near the shore when he

Finally jumped out of his boat and left its safety for the first time in over a year

He swam ashore and discovered a house and when he knocked he made

Contact with the first other humans since he left his village in Mexico

438 days ago and after traveling nearly

11,000 kilometers to put into perspective just how far away that is

Imagine starting in a tiny boat in Lisbon Portugal and traveling less than one mile per hour

Until you drifted across the land to her Oshima, Japan

Alvarenga ended up washing ashore on the ebon atoll

which is the southern tip of the Marshall Islands and

one of the most remote spots

On the planet had he missed this spot the next likely stop for him would have been the Philippines nearly

5000 more kilometers away and since it took him

438 days to travel roughly 11,000 kilometers. It probably would have taken him about

240 more days to hit the Philippines

Fortunately for him though

He somehow landed on this tiny tiny speck in the middle of the biggest ocean on earth and got himself

Rescued because of it later

He was flown back to his home in El Salvador

Where he published a book and got himself sued by the family of his friend who died on the boat?

Because they claimed that he probably ate him

So the lesson is even if you survive more than a year stranded at sea

You could still end up getting sued over something that you may or may not have actually done while you were out there

but if you're like me and the ocean terrifies you so much that you'll never actually go but

You want to learn more about the terrifying scale and the weird creatures that live there

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