Lost at sea: the man who vanished for 14 months José Salvador Alvarenga
“As we got closer, I saw the gentleman raise his hand up and start waving at me,” Cornell said. “And that’s when I knew we weren’t fishing anymore. We were actually there to rescue somebody.” A search for six others aboard the capsized boat has been suspended. Eventually, they came upon the captain’s deck boots floating in the water, and used the boat’s GPS to retrace his path. Though the Coast Guard put out a call for a man overboard, that wasn’t suffice for Andrew, a lifelong fisherman, and Jack, a Naval Academy student.
McMahon and Maess later sued Larsen’s estate for civil damages. Fortunately, McMahon and his friends weren’t the only boaters on the water that day, and good Samaritans quickly swung into action. First on the scene was a man with his young daughter in a small boat with a tiller-style outboard.
Later, I would sit with Alvarenga for many hours, back at his home in El Salvador, as he described in detail the brutal realities of living at sea for more than a year. Over the course of more than 40 interviews, he described his extraordinary survival at sea. Marlin Lee Larsen, the driver of the Bayliner, said he was sitting down and didn’t see McMahon’s boat.
McMahon was still upset and didn’t want to board the boat that almost killed him, so the Good Samaritan took him over to another boat. Maess and Durham went aboard the Bayliner, but McMahon wasn’t quite ready to meet the man whose inattention had nearly killed him. “Quite honestly I was in shock and I didn’t know how I would react, so I asked him to take me to another boat that was hovering nearby,” he says. The anglers struggled to stay afloat in jeans and waterlogged sweatshirts as the current pulled them toward the pilings and the ocean beyond. What happened after this viral smash-up at the mouth of the Columbia is just as scary as the crash itself.
No one could have predicted the collision, which happened in fair weather with good visibility. The sheer randomness of the accident is the best argument for the one thing he didn’t do that day—wear his life jacket. Motorboats and Class A and 1 vessels propelled by sail alone must carry the combined lanterns but not the white light aft as previously described. A boat leaving Ebon searching for land would either have to churn 4,000 miles north-east to hit Alaska or 2,500 miles south-west to Brisbane, Australia.
He had installed some new electronics, he said, and they blocked his view. As the powerboat bore down on them, the anglers prepared to abandon ship. McMahon and Durham have yet to file lawsuits against Larsen, although they’ve hired attorneys to do so. Attorney Josh Lamborn said Durham suffered psychological trauma during the crash and hasn’t been able to return to the water since August.
The spray and crashing waves dumped hundreds of gallons of seawater into the boat, threatening to sink or flip them. While Alvarenga steered, Córdoba was frantically tossing water back into the ocean, pausing only momentarily to allow his shoulder muscles to recover. Andrea Gail was a 72-foot commercial fishing vessel constructed in St. Augustine, Florida in 1978, and owned by Robert Brown. She also sailed from Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she would offload her catch and reload food and stores for her next run. The video — which was later posted to Facebook — shows the moment the speeding motorboat plows into Maess’ fishing vessel.
He stared at the land as he tried to pick out details from the shore. It was a tiny island, no bigger than a football field, he calculated. Darkness shrank their world, as a gale-force wind ripped offshore and drove the men farther out to sea. Were they now back to where they had been fishing a day earlier?
S emergency position-indicating radio beacon was discovered washed up on the shore of Sable Island in Nova Scotia. Authorities called off the search for the missing vessel on November 9, 1991, due to the low probability of crew survival. When making way through the water, fishing vessels must also have sidelights and a stern light. All motorboats anchored in navigable waterways of Louisiana must show a white 360-degree stern light from sunset to sunrise.
Dion Liriano is a 51-year-old American zookeeper who has retired from the business. He was once a highly successful director of the Zoo and Aquarium, but he has since hung up his gloves and moved on to other ventures. Dion's passion for animals began at a young age, when he would help his father care for their family pets. This love grew exponentially when he started working at the zoo; Dion quickly became one of the most experienced keepers in the business. He credits his success to the relationships he built with both staff and animals over the years.