SAN DIEGO An 86-year-old sailor and his dog are back on shore after a Pacific voyage that went silent for more than two months. The Coast Guard coordinated their rescue roughly 460 miles off the California coast on Wednesday, October 28, after the man had not been heard from since August 20 during a passage from Astoria, Oregon, to Pago Pago, American Samoa.
The mariner was sailing his vessel Willow Wind on the roughly 5,000-mile route when contact stopped. Per a Coast Guard release carried by Yahoo News, watchstanders received a report on Saturday, October 24, that he was overdue, and no one had reached him since Thursday, August 20.
The break came Tuesday afternoon, October 27. An emergency beacon registered to Willow Wind transmitted a distress signal to the Rescue Coordination Center in Alameda, California. An Air Station Sacramento C-27 Spartan aircrew located the sailboat that evening, with an HC-130 Hercules and the cutter Robert Ward also diverted, Upworthy reported.
The motor vessel Grand Orion, a commercial carrier, reached the scene about 3:20 a.m. Wednesday but could not safely take the pair aboard in rough seas. The crew waited out the swell for more than 14 hours and brought the mariner and his dog aboard at 5:36 p.m., leaving the sailboat, which had damaged sails, adrift, according to PEOPLE.
On Thursday morning, October 29, an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew hoisted the two from the Grand Orion about 170 miles west of Ventura and flew them to Coast Guard Sector San Diego, the Daily Beast reported. Emergency responders then took the mariner to Scripps Mercy Hospital for evaluation.
“When emergency medical personnel were able to evaluate the mariner, he was weak and had difficulty walking, but no major injuries,” the Coast Guard said in a statement quoted by the New York Post. The dog’s condition was not detailed.
“We are grateful to the merchant mariners and Coast Guard crews whose coordinated efforts brought this search to a successful conclusion,” said Commander Jason Nguyen, chief of the Coast Guard Southwest District command center.
Dexerto’s report on the rescue has drawn more than 1,500 likes alongside a Tuesday post summarizing the find. The sailor’s name has not been released, and the Coast Guard has not said what disabled Willow Wind or how the man and his dog stayed alive through the silence that began on August 20.
Survival stories keep pulling readers in. Hypefresh has covered Ginn Lee surviving a vicious 12-stab attack by two men, Drake pulling a pregnant fan from a mosh pit and gifting her $30K, and the hunt for a $138 million pirate treasure ship lost at sea for 300 years.
The question left hanging is the simplest one. A single beacon on a broken sailboat did what 69 days of searching could not, and a merchant crew 460 miles from shore finished the job. For an 86-year-old mariner and the dog beside him, that was enough.
