The Ocean at Night: Two Crazy Stories

These are two true events that happened these past few months:

Two men from Kiribati, Uein Buranibwe and Temaei Tontaake, set out to get gasoline from a neighboring island. They had a GPS but the battery ran down and they got lost in the dark. Their engine stopped working and they started drifting.

And drifting.

For 33 days they drifted, eating tuna that they caught with hand lines and resorting to drinking some sea water since it didn't rain much. Sometimes they would go for three or four days before seeing another school of fish. Then they saw an island and tried to maneuver the boat into a current that would take them to it, but they were too weak. The island disappeared as night came. They paddled and paddled until they passed out.

Fortunately, the waves bashed against the boat until it came to the shallower waters of the reef, and they were able to get up on the land, though they couldn't walk very well. One of the men had enough energy and sense to climb a tree and get coconuts to drink. After that they started looking for people. Turns out they had drifted 350 miles to Namdrik Atoll. That is a LONG ways!

Even crazier, they had trouble communicating with the Marshallese (since the Kiribati speak Gilbertese) until they found someone who DID speak their language . . . and she happened to be the daughter of Tontaake's uncle, who had been lost at sea 50 years earlier and had drifted to the same island. The uncle had stayed and married one of the locals.

Buranibwe and Tontaake had to wait for the next boat in order to return to Marakei, because Air Marshall Islands is down. (As in, its one plane needs maintenance and we don't know when it will be working, so boats are the only way to get to the outer islands.) See here for the newspaper article on this story in the Marshall Islands Journal (December 16, 2011).

Morals of the story: 1) read Life of Pi and take notes, and 2) don't go sailing on the ocean at night unless you have emergency equipment AND backup emergency equipment.

Second story:

Last month a man was fishing with some friends on the ocean side of Majuro, near Rita somewhere (Rita's about 15 minutes from our place). They snorkel around, spear the fish, and string the fish to themselves as they go. It was getting dark, so his friends went in, but this man stayed a little longer. Suddenly a shark bit his leg off. Instead of swimming for shore, where he would not be able to see where the shark was coming from, he waited (in salt water!) for the shark to attack again, and he put his spear through it, THEN he swam all the way back to shore.

Geez.

Morals of the story: 1) face your fears head-on, and 2) don't go swimming in the ocean at night!

(Picture I took at twilight off the pier by the bridge)