A Lithuanian sailor who fell overboard from his boat survived 14 hours adrift in the South Pacific, hanging from a piece of floating garbage until he was rescued, according to his son.
Vidan Perevertilov, who was not wearing a life jacket when he rushed on board, swam for several hours until he headed for a black spot spotted a few miles away and turned out to be a drifting buoy, “A piece of rubbish”, in his son’s words to the Stuff New Zealand news portal.
The shipwreck is the engineer of the Silver Supporter, which was sailing between New Zealand and the Pitcairn Islands, a British territory in the South Pacific, when at dawn he became dizzy in the engine room, went out on deck to catch his breath and fell into the sea, probably by at an interruption, without the rest of the crew noticing until six hours later.
The captain ordered to return when he noticed his absence and the crew managed to calculate his position. about to check in the nautical register that he was still on board at four in the morning.
After several hours of searching, involving French ships leaving near Tahiti, the crew located and rescued him.
“He seemed to be 20 years older and very tired, but he was alive,” his son, Marat, told the news portal.