His rescuers threw a swim ring into the trunk of Romualdo Macedo Rodrigues.
JTFMax:
When the ship of the Brazilian fisherman Romualdo Macedo Rodrigues (44) was filled with water, the non-swimmer saved himself in an open freezer. Then, for eleven days, he sailed across the Atlantic in his unconventional lifeboat until colleagues found him off the coast of Suriname's small South American country.
"I was desperate, I had no food or water, and I thought my end was near," Rodrigues told CNN's record TV.
He didn't want to reveal exactly how he was able to survive for so long despite the adverse conditions. The longest a human has survived without water is 18 days.
Paddling was out of the question far from the coast. The 44-year-old also reported sharks that swam around the ice chest but did not attack him. But, out of sheer fear, he still didn't dare to sleep.
But the fisherman described his rescue pictorially: "It gave me strength to think of my family, although there seemed to be no way out. But then I heard a noise, and a boat was at the other end of the freezer. So I threw up my hands and called for help."
One of the rescuers filmed the rescue. The video shows Rodrigues getting out of the chest disoriented, dehydrated and sunburnt. His clothes are torn, and he has tied part of his T-shirt around his head to protect himself. Then, with the last strength, he lets himself fall onto the deck.
But that was not the end of his odyssey. Because he did not have valid papers, the Surinamese authorities detained him for 16 days before he was allowed to return to Brazil.
Back home, he could hardly believe his luck: “The freezer was God in my life. It was a miracle.” It is not known whether he took the device home with him.
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