A U.S. Navy and Coast Guard operation Tuesday rescued three sailors stranded on a small Pacific Ocean islet for more than a week after the trio spelled “HELP” using palm leaves. placed on a white sand beach.
Unexpectedly, the mission also turned into a family reunion.
The three men had planned to fish in the waters around Pikelot Atoll, Micronesia, on March 31 when their 20-foot open skiff was caught in swells and its outboard motor was damaged, according to US Coast Guard officials.
They landed on uninhabited Pikelot, but their radio ran out of battery before they could call for help.
So the castaways gathered palm fronds from the 31-acre island, spelled them “HELP” on the beach and waited, according to a Coast Guard news release.
The names of the stranded men have not been released by the Coast Guard, and attempts by CNN to contact their relatives were not answered.
For a week, the men lived on coconut meat, but had fresh water from a small well on the island, sometimes visited by local fishermen, ranger officials said. ribs.
The search for the men began on April 6, when a relative called emergency services in the US Pacific territory of Guam, saying they had not returned to Polowat Atoll, an island more than 100 miles away, where the three men had begun their journey. Easter Sunday.
It’s hard to overstate how remote Piklelot is. The island is part of the Federated States of Micronesia, a Pacific nation located between the Philippines and Hawaii and made up of more than 600 islands scattered across approximately 2.5 million square kilometers of ocean.
The Coast Guard said a U.S. Navy P-8A reconnaissance aircraft dispatched from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, spotted the palm-shaped “HELP” sign on the beach on April 7.
Lt. Chelsea Garcia, coordinator of the search and rescue mission the day the trio was located, said the sign was “crucial” in finding them in a search area covering more than 103,000 square miles.
“This act of ingenuity was critical in guiding rescue efforts directly to their location,” Garcia said in a statement.
The Navy plane dropped survival bags to the three men and transmitted their location to the rescue center.
A day later, a Coast Guard HC-130 flying from Barbers Point Air Force Base in Hawaii radio dropped the men, who were able to tell the crew they were in good shape and eager to get help to return to Polowat.
When the Coast Guard Cutter Oliver Henry reached Pikelot on April 9, the story took a different turn.
One of the first lifeguards on the beach was Petty Officer 2nd Class Eugene Halishlius. The stranded men were surprised to find that Halishlius was Micronesian and spoke the local language.
“I could see in their faces: ‘Whoa! Who is this guy who speaks our language?’ Halishlius told CNN in an interview from the Oliver Henry, which was at sea Thursday after dropping the men off at Polowat.
When he gave his name to the first of the stranded men to reach the rescue boat, the castaway was stunned: they were related.
“It’s a crazy world, I found out I was related to them!” said Halishlius.
“He couldn’t believe I was in the Coast Guard trying to save them.”
The man was a third cousin, the others fourth cousins, he said.
Surprisingly, this was not Pikelot’s first shipwreck rescue.
In 2020, three other men traveling between two Micronesian atolls found themselves stranded there after their boat ran out of fuel during their journey.
These three men spelled out “SOS” on the beach, a message that was spotted by the crew of a U.S. Air Force tanker operating from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, who then ordered guards to coasts and Australian naval units to recover the men from the beach. island.
How does this happen on the same island twice in four years?
“It could be a coincidence,” said Chief Warrant Officer Sara Muir, public affairs officer for U.S. Coast Guard Forces Micronesia.
“Micronesians travel from island to island frequently, and do so with great skill and experience,” she said.
But sometimes accidents happen. Just like unexpected family reunions.
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