Feeling hot and dizzy, a sailor on board a cargo ship in the South Pacific went out on deck to get some air.
He would, his son later told local media, spend at least the next 14 hours fighting desperately against the waves and clinging to an old fishing float to survive.
Lithuanian engineer Vidam Perevertilov, 52, worked a routine night shift in the engine room of the “Silver Supporter” earlier this month, as he sailed between New Zealand’s Tauranga port and the Pitcairn Islands, a tiny British territory in the outside.
But around 4 am on February 16, he fell overboard after passing out.
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Drifting in the darkness and without a life jacket, his hopes were raised when the sun rose.
“He could see a black dot on the horizon several kilometers away,” his son Marat told the New Zealand news website Stuff. Then he started to swim towards you.
“It turns out that it was an old fishing float … It was not anchored in anything or on a boat, it was just a piece of garbage from the sea,” said Marat.
“His will to survive was strong,” he added.
NBC News was unable to contact Marat or his father for immediate comment.
The son of the engineer said that as soon as the crew realized that their father was missing, they retraced their movements and sent distress alerts to nearby ships, including French Polynesia’s JRCC Tahiti.
“What happened next was almost inexplicable,” Marat told the New Zealand news website.
“The Silver Supporter was performing search patterns and one of the passengers said he heard a faint human cry on the ship’s starboard” about 400 nautical miles south of the French Polynesia’s Southern Islands.
Desiccated, tired and looking 20 years older, according to Marat, the crew threw a life buoy at Vidam, lowered a ladder and pulled him back on board – half a day after he left them.
His son calls the rescue “incredible” and credits his father’s survival with staying fit and healthy.
A statement by the French High Commission in French Polynesia confirmed that JRCC Tahiti had responded to requests for help in the search.
He said he warned French navy aircraft in Tahiti, as well as his meteorological agency, Météo-France, which began to calculate the possible drift of the sailor based on the winds.
“A happy ending for the man and the entire Silver Supporter team, a relief for everyone who contributed to the search,” the statement said.
The incident illustrates “how dangerous life and work at sea is even in the 21st century”, as well as the benefits of modern naval technology, said Dr. Chris Ware, senior professor of naval history and director of the Greenwich Maritime Center in London.
“The fact that on any other day the buoy, which was adrift, would be seen as marine pollution, in this case it ended up saving lives,” he added.
High Commissioner of Great Britain in New Zealand and Governor of the Pitcairn Islands, Laura Clarke, tweeted that the rescue was an “extraordinary survival story”, adding that it would impress even Captain Bligh, the famous captain of the “HMS Bounty”.
The ship suffered a riot in 1789, which was popularized in a Hollywood film with actor Marlon Brando in 1962.
Most of the inhabitants of the Pitcairn Islands have European and Polynesian roots and descend from nine mutineers on the British ship. Most of the inhabitants move to Australia and New Zealand to study and work.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, all tourism in the remote sandy Pitcairn – the only inhabited island in the group, approximately 2 miles long and 1 mile wide – has been stopped.
Although the Silver Supporter was allowed to carry supplies to the island, its schedule has been largely reduced to “protect its approximately 50 inhabitants”, according to a tourism website by the Pitcairn Islands government, which leases the ship.
Matthew Mulligan and Yasmine Salam contributed.