A 47-year-old man named Elvis Francois, who spent 24 days lost at sea in the Caribbean, has revealed that he survived mainly on ketchup.
He was rescued 120 nautical miles northwest of Colombia’s Puerto Bolívar, after a plane spotted the word “help” written on his sailboat, according to a statement released by the Colombian navy on Thursday.
“I had no food. It was just a bottle of ketchup that was on the boat, garlic powder and Maggi (stock cubes) so I mixed it up with some water,” Francois said in a video provided by the Colombian army.
Francois, from the island nation of Dominica, said he had been making repairs to his boat near the Dutch part of the island of Saint Martin in December when adverse weather conditions pulled his boat out to sea.
He said he lacked navigational knowledge and was unable to maneuver his boat back to shore – spending weeks lost at sea.
“Twenty four days – no land, nobody to talk to. Don’t know what to do, don’t know where you are. It was rough,” he said. “At a certain time, I lose hope. I think about my family.”
After being rescued, he was transferred to the port city of Cartagena where he received medical care and was later handed over to immigration authorities for his return home, Colombian officials said.
It isn’t new for cruise ships traveling near Florida to come upon boats of migrants. But a series of recent rescues and social media posts about them have brought a fresh wave of attention to these dramatic moments at sea and the migration crisis behind them.
The small boat in this case was in Bahamian waters and the people onboard reported there was another vessel out as well, a spokesperson from the US Coast Guard District Seven told CNN.