How five people survived a three-month, 4800km odyssey lost at sea

Zane Irwin

November 6, 2026 — 8:30am

New York: Tedwinson Paul had made the crossing before. At 31, he was the oldest of nine family members on a routine supply run to a nearby island in the Federated States of Micronesia.

What should have been a short jaunt back home in their six-metre skiff became a three-month, 4800-plus-kilometre odyssey across the ocean that left four of his kin, including a child, dead. He and the other survivors were rescued in the island nation of Kiribati on Sunday after nearly 100 days adrift, the latest journey in a long list of Pacific voyages gone fatally awry.

At some point on their trip home, their boat ran out of fuel and blew off course, said Arthur Irons II, an official in the Micronesian state from which the family had departed.

When Irons heard the boat had not returned as expected, he notified the federal government, he said. The US Coast Guard, which helps patrol the region, launched a search by air and sea, marshalling military and commercial vessels to sweep an area of 85,700 square kilometres. But after 10 days without any sign of the missing boat, the Coast Guard called off the effort.

The passengers saw ships and planes in the distance and waved for help, but their vessel was too far away, said Irons, who had spoken with Paul multiple times since the rescue.

The passengers drank rainwater to sustain themselves, Irons said. They caught birds and turtles for food, according to a nurse and a clerk on the island where they eventually landed. The dead were tossed overboard.

In late October, after almost 100 days at sea, an island emerged in the distance. The next day, their skiff ran aground, splitting apart on the coral-wrapped shores of Tabuaeran, or Fanning Island, in Kiribati – more than 4800km from their original destination.

The sounds of Sunday morning church bells ringing guided the survivors – three men and two 13-year-old boys – into town, the nurse and clerk on Tabuaeran said. Villagers at first thought the survivors were drunk as they stumbled weakly toward them, unclothed, said the nurse, Baukin Raimon.

The pastor halted services to investigate, and the town soon took the passengers into its care, said Raimon, who proceeded to give them intravenous drips.

As of Tuesday, she said, the men were able to stand on their own, though the boys were still too weak to move unassisted.

Reactions in Micronesia to news of the rescue included relief for the living, grief for the missing and amazement that anyone had survived.

“We never expect things like this to happen,” Irons said. Paul, the eldest survivor, had told him through tears on a video call that he was grateful to have lived but ridden with guilt over those who did not, he said.

“We are thankful to God for bringing back the five individuals, and we continue to pray for the four who did not make it,” the governor’s office in Chuuk, the Micronesian state from which the vessel departed, said in a statement. Officials in Micronesia and Kiribati were working on the paperwork to fly them home, it added.

The governor’s office posted a photo on Facebook of three men and two boys, thin with malnutrition, with downcast expressions.

The US Coast Guard was “extremely relieved to hear that five individuals were found and are receiving care”, a spokesperson for its Oceania district said.

Severe storms, engine failures and other technical issues can cause passenger or fishing vessels to drift far from their destinations in the Pacific. Without proper safety equipment, even a minor malfunction can often prove lethal, Irons said.

In April, the US Coast Guard rescued a family from the same state in Micronesia who had spent a week at sea on a seven-metre skiff with engine failure. In 2024, three men stranded on a remote Micronesian island for more than a week were rescued after spelling out “HELP” on a beach using palm leaves.

“It’s like a routine, I’m sorry to say,” said Irons, who was once himself stranded at sea for multiple days after his boat sank in 2016. Just two weeks ago, he said, a boat leaving an island in Micronesia disappeared with three or four people on board. The group never made it back to land.

“They found the boat, but they did not find any survivors,” Irons said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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