Two teenagers who drifted at sea for six days in a small sailing boat without food or water told on Monday how they prayed to be rescued from the shark-infested waters of the Atlantic.
Josh Long (17) and Troy Driscoll (15) were found on Saturday off Cape Fear in North Carolina, having drifted for more than 160km. They were sunburned, exhausted and dehydrated but otherwise unharmed, and were soon able to tell of their adventure.
The pair caught some jellyfish, which they ate raw, and went swimming to cool their bodies, but had to watch out for the many sharks that followed their 4m-long boat.
”Basically, I thought I would never see my family again,” Long told CBS television from his hospital bed. ”I just prayed every day that God would send me home or take me to heaven.”
”There’s always sharks everywhere,” Long added on CNN television. ”My dad always told me that they’re not going to bother you very much; they’re just curious. But we’d be swimming around, and they’d come up and start heading your way, and that’s when we got out of there.
”You could sit on the boat, and they’d start swimming toward the boat, and they’re everywhere. Every time you turn around and get in the water, there’s one coming.”
Because they had no fresh water, the two would gargle with seawater.
”The only thing we could do with the water was gargle salt water and spit it out. And it drizzled one night, and we licked water off the deck, trying to get something in us. So that’s all we had.”
The teenagers had been aiming to reach a sand spit during a holiday at Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. The boat drifted outside a zone patrolled by the United States Coast Guard and the two were eventually found by a fishing boat.
”We certainly feel like we have experienced a miracle,” said Eddie Long, Josh’s father.
”Most of the authorities were turning it from a rescue to a recovery,” suggesting that ”their bodies were going to come afloat any time”.
But he added: ”We knew there was room in there for a miracle. So we — the people who prayed and the people who participated — we thought it was tremendous.” — AFP