A man reported missing at sea two months ago was rescued on the overturned hull of his sailboat off the North Carolina coast and he said he rationed his water and energy and prayed for help throughout the ordeal.
The crew of a German-flagged container ship found 37-year-old Louis Jordan on his single-masted, 10-metre boat on Thursday afternoon.
Neither he nor the Coast Guard said exactly when during the journey the vessel capsized or how long he might have clung to it. He had a shoulder injury and was dehydrated but arrived at a hospital in good condition and refused treatment, family members and authorities said.
"Every day I was like, 'Please God, send me some rain, send me some water,"' Jordan told WAVY-TV.
Jordan said he initially did not believe the container ship was real when he saw it. He said the ship's crew did not see him until he began waving his arms.
"I waved my hands real slowly, and that's the signal 'I'm in distress. Help me,"' he told WAVY. "I blew my whistles. I had three whistles. They never heard them. I turned my American flag upside down and put that up. That says, 'Rescue me."'
Jordan had been living on his 1950s-era boat at a marina in South Carolina until January, when he told his family he was going into open water to sail and do some fishing, said his mother, Norma Davis. He set out Jan. 23, Coast Guard officials said, and hadn't been heard from since.
The details of Jordan's whereabouts over the 66 days he was missing and how he might have survived were still unclear, said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss.
"We don't know where he capsized," Doss said. "We really won't know what happened to him out there until we talk to him" at length, he added, but said Jordan did manage to eat fish he caught while at sea.
Jordan told WAVY that he was travelling north when his boat hit bad weather. He said he saw a wave crash into his window, and the boat eventually filled with water. He said at one point he was flying through the air and he thinks he broke his shoulder.
He said he rationed his water to about a pint a day, but "for such a long a time I was so thirsty."
The Coast Guard in Miami was notified by his father, Frank Jordan, on Jan. 29 that he hadn't seen or heard from his son in a week, Coast Guard spokeswoman Marilyn Fajardo said.
Alerts were issued from New Jersey to Miami to be on the lookout for Jordan and his sailboat, according to the Coast Guard. Officials also searched financial data to determine whether Jordan had come ashore without being noticed, but they found no such indication, Fajardo said.
A search began Feb. 8, but Fajardo said the Coast Guard abandoned it after 10 days.
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