Crazy! 3-Day Jamaican Fishing Trip Becomes 3-Week Ordeal
Count your blessings, people!
While most of us were preparing for Thanksgiving this year, a pair of Jamaican fisherman set out on a routine 3-day fishing trip off Jamaica's southeastern coast. A usual, the men, Everton Gregory, 54, and John Sobah, 58, had 14 buckets of ice, 16 gallons of water and several bags of cereal, bread and fruit to keep they going for several days.
As they set out, the water was calm and the winds were normal, but things changed drastically when their motor broke down without a way to repair it at sea. The water was also too deep for them to anchor up and their boat began drifting away from the Caribbean island. The men were reportedly stranded at see for 3 weeks, before being rescued.
On Dec. 12, a Colombian navy helicopter patrolling off the coast of that South American country spotted the men near Lack of Sleep cay, more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) from where they started. It took two days for a navy vessel to reach them because of bad weather. The men were hospitalized for several days at the Colombian island of San Andres before boarding a plane back home to Jamaica.
The two Jamaican fishermen survived by eating raw fish they caught and drinking water from melted ice they had brought to preserve their catch. The Colombian navy finally plucked them from the sea a week ago and delivered them home Saturday after treating them for severe dehydration, malnutrition and hypothermia.
At first, the men got by on sipping the water and eating the food they brought with them. But days turned into weeks, and they began to eat the fish they had caught and drink the melted ice that had kept it fresh.
Gregory and Sobah kept eating raw fish and used a tarp to try to collect water, but the rain clouds remained at a distance.
Back home, friends and family called police and used their own boats to search the area where the men were last seen. The two fishermen work for the Florida-based nonprofit group Food for the Poor, which chartered a plane to search along Jamaica's coast.
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